The Crux Blog: Drug War Cost Could Go a Shockingly Long Way if Spent on Education

Sometimes it's difficult to picture the huge amount of money we are spending on the failed war on drugs. This article takes just one line item from the cost of the drug war and shows how shockingly far that money would go if it were spent on education instead...

In a June 2010 report entitled "The High Cost Of Incarceration," (the link to this PDF is below,) the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found that there are 561,526 NON-VIOLENT drug users incarcerated in the U.S. The cost to tax payers is $26,000 a year (or $2166.67 a month) per inmate. This means that we are spending $1.2+ billion ($1,216,639,666.67) every month to incarcerate non-violent drug users. Of course, this is just the cost of incarceration alone. It does not include the costs incurred by law enforcement or the courts to convict these people.

Now let's take a look at the population of school children in America. According to childstats.gov, (whose link is also included here,) there are approximately 50 million school-aged children (age 6-17) in 2013...

SO WHAT ELSE COULD BE DONE WITH THIS MONEY?

* After only 5.75 months, we could buy a $140 computer tablet for every schoolchild age 6-17!!!

* After 14.38 months, we could buy a $350 laptop computer for each schoolchild in our country.

Imagine! The price of textbooks would go down (there would be no need to actually print them.) Children would have constant access to the internet to do their school work. The possibilities are endless. Even the weight of backpacks would decrease greatly!

Having such advantages could immensely improve our children's education, but people who are averse to this species of life seem to feel that the money is better spent on putting non-violent drug users in prison.

In these days of government austerity, why do we keep throwing good money down the drain? Why is it that education budgets are being slashed, but the failed drug war remains at full funding?