Dear Mr. or Ms. President,

In 2010 the U.S government spent over 15 billion dollars on the war on drugs. This is way too much money to spend on something that doesn’t even work at all, it could have been spent on anything else. The war on drugs is a waste of money for america.

One way this is a waste of money is that one quarter of the people imprisoned in the U.S. is for some drug related reason and all the people imprisoned for that is more than all people imprisoned altogether in all of Europe. It costs the government $31,000 yearly per inmate, that’s way too much money to be spending on people who are in jail for a non violent crime. (NY Times Jay-Z http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/opinion/jay-z-the-war-on-drugs-is-an-epic-fail.html?_r=0)

The majority of the people imprisoned for drug crimes are for addiction not for dealing or supplying. Addiction is like a disease not a crime so it shouldn’t be treated that way, they should help them not punish them. 65% of all people who are addicted to drugs go to prison and only 11% go to some sort of rehab, this is bad because they’re not harming anyone. (Google: Unknown Writer https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+money+does+it+cost+to+keep+someone+in+prison&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

People who think that this issue is not an issue and is actually important and needs to happen all say that legalization and ilegalization controls everything including addiction. But then they have no evidence to support their claim and it all seems to be completely bias. (Human Events jhawkins http://humanevents.com/2007/01/25/in-defense-of-the-drug-war/)

In conclusion I think that the war on drugs is one of the biggest wastes of money in the U.S. and if it does continue there should not be as much money being poured into it.

Sincerely,

Damian