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Drug War Statistics
Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000
Number of people arrested in 2009 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1,663,582
Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2009: 858,408
Number of Americans incarcerated in 2009 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,424,279 or 1 in every 99.1 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world
Fraction of people incarcerated for a drug offense in state prison that are black or Hispanic, although these groups use and sell drugs at similar rates as whites: 2/3
Number of states that allow the medical use of marijuana: 16 + District of Columbia
Estimated annual revenue that California would raise if it taxed and regulated the sale of marijuana: $1,400,000,000
Number of murders in 2009 in Juarez, Mexico, the epicenter of that country’s drug war: 2,635+, the highest murder rate of any city in the world
Number of students who have lost federal financial aid eligibility because of a drug conviction: 200,000+
Number of people in the U.S. that died from a drug overdose in 2006: 26,000+
Number of people annually infected with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C by sharing contaminated syringes: 32,000
