At over $40 billion a year, the direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, court personnel, guards and other resources for imprisoning and punishing convicts.
The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs.
