Visualizing the Economic Failure Known as the War on Drug

Most of us are probably in agreement that the “War on Drug” is a whopper of a waste of money, little did we know just how worthless the efforts our taxes pay for are. Above you will find Matt Groff’s chart which helps to visualize the relationship between US drug-war spending and US drug addiction. As you can see, there is no relationship.

It’s a rather compelling demonstration of the incredible economic foolishness of the drug war and that’s without accounting for the direct and indirect human costs. More from The Atlantic:

Groff, who made the chart for his new documentary on the drug war The 1315 Project, says that it shows the costly war on drugs simply isn’t working. A note: The numbers on this chart alone don’t add up to $1.5 trillion, which represents a more inclusive count of drug control spending, with prison costs and state level costs determined by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but instead to $800 billion. Groff included that $1.5 trillion because the chart appears in the documentary as a source discusses that more complete amount.

via The Atlantic