Where does the 1.3% addiction rate statistic come from?
One of the challenges of evaluating America’s system of drug prohibition is tracking down and assembling the raw data that comes from various entities. Since I am are most interested in what has been done in the name of combatting illicit drugs, alcohol being perfectly legal and regulated, I’ve focused on the dependency rates solely for illicit drugs, ignoring dependency rates for both alcohol alone and alcohol + illicit drugs (as it stands to reason those dependencies would default to only alcohol in the absence of illicit drugs). What we find is a relatively constant 1.3% of Americans dependent on illicit drugs. Here you can see the data for 2002-2010 which shows approximately 1.3% of the population addicted to illicit drugs . Earlier data is difficult to find and link to online, though the National Survey on Drug Use and Health is the primary data source for this information.
How does the chart add up to $1.5 trillion?
A few astute viewers have noted that at its peak spending, the chart I’ve included only hits approximately $20 billion, which extrapolated over 40 years would yield only $800 billion. Yet we can clearly see that the chart itself is not flat at the $20B level, but climbs sharply beginning in the mid 1980s. So in short, the chart, as shown, does not add up to $1.5 trillion.
So why did I do this? This graphic was initially not meant to stand on its own but rather illustrate an interviewee’s assertions about the costs and efficacy of drug prohibition. In a tight production schedule, I utilized a data set that I thought most accurately illustrated the nature and growth of the costs of the War on Drugs and that data is US federal drug control spending. But the $1.5 trillion figure, as mentioned by Jack Cole in his interview, accounts for many more costs, including state level costs, prison costs, lost productivity costs due to incarceration and others. I trust Jack’s estimate of $1.5 trillion after a quick review of the ONDCP report from 2004 gave me confidence that he was right on the money. You can check out the ONDCP’s The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States, 1992-2002