The United States' War on Drugs is ineffective for the following reasons:

*It creates a black market economy for organized crime. US citizens spend more than $65 billion per year on drugs, and that's $65 billion in the hands of criminals.

*American taxpayers pay $22,000 a year to keep a non-violent drug offender in prison.

*Tobacco kills more than half a million people each year, while illegal drugs account for only 17,000 deaths.

Doing drugs is a behavior that the United States will never be able to stamp out. As we saw with the prohibition of alcohol, that policy did not stop people from consuming alcohol, but only led to the establishment of organized crime. The same is true with drugs. Keeping drugs illegal only serves to create a black market which feeds money into organized crime. If the War on Drugs were ended, and drugs legalized, then our prisons would not be full of non violent offenders, and organized crime would lose its revenue stream. The United States could then enact laws to control drugs, similar to how alcohol and tobacco are controlled, that would ensure quality while also reeducating people on how to be smart with recreational drug use.

If you support the legalization of recreational drug use, and regulated sale of those drugs, similar to how alcohol and tobacco are regulated, please sign our petition.

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