I have been following the recent political debate on the hill and both parties are asking for large cuts in spending to balance the budget. Not once have I read a politician suggest reducing funding for drug enforcement agencies. The DEA currently has a budget of close to 3 billion dollars. Over 10 years that value would be close to 40 billion dollars in spending.
What angers me is we are considering cutting social programs, and even NASA the most inspirational program our government funds. Other than the DEA we spend tremendous amount of money on drug enforcement in other agencies like the Deparment of Justice, the Office of National Drug Control Policy,Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, Department of Defense, and the IRS even gets a cut. Again not counting the DEA the value comes up to 7 billion dollars and some change. Look at the Federal Drug Control Budget if you do not believe me.
The most depressing thing is that the Department of Education and Department of Health get less than a third of all the spending for Drug Control. Our failed policies continue to fail and we refuse to make even a change in spending allocation to fix it.
We spend a running total of about 15 billion a year on federal drug control without spending on the Department of health it would come to around 10 billion. Over ten years slashing this budget could save the government 100 billion dollars! We would not cut any health spending and would save tremendous amounts of money. However, social security spending, and medicare is more important to cut. I am not proud to say I am an American when our politicians cut spending on programs we desperately need and perpetuate programs that have no proven efficacy.
Do I Smell a Petition?
The Weed Street Journal