The Cocaine Price Support Program by Bill Walker: "The Costs of Drug Price Supports

• Cost #1: Taxes. ... I think we can safely say that the actual direct tax costs of the drug war are over $100 billion.
• Cost #2: The high prices of illegal drugs. ... But while the actual number of drug users may be open to debate, there is no question that legal heroin and cocaine only cost about as much as aspirin; marijuana is literally a weed. Now that they are illegal, they cost the economy tens of billions.
• Cost #3: Loss of labor. About 1.5 million people were arrested for drug possession and/or sale in 2003. The overall US prison and jail population is over 2 million. Let’s say roughly half that number is related to the drug war. When each drug user is criminalized, they turn from a worker making an average of $40,000 to an inmate costing around $30,000; that would be another $70 billion or so annually.
• Cost #4: Real (not victimless) crime. Murder has soared since the Drug War expanded in the 1970s. ...
• Cost #5: Terrorism. Every half-baked wannabe dictator with a few AK-47s can fund his nonproductive lifestyle with illegal drug sales. From the Taliban to the FARC in Colombia, US-designated 'terrorist' groups make money from the US drug trade. ...

(Via Lew Rockwell.)