it's an old story, but bears re-examination, maybe...

with all this talk of the war on terrorism, it's easy to forget that we've been engaging in another war on a noun for many years now... the war on drugs! so let's check out a few tasty tidbits of this sordid tale.

1. this story last year my re-ignited interest in this topic... a crashed drug plane turned out to be recently owned by the u.s.

2. it reminded me of the (mostly true?) story of the cia and nicuraguan contras and the introduction to crack cocaine.

3. while there have been some improvements, the sentencing for crack vs. cocaine is very racist, 25 years vs. 5 years for 1 gram.

4. the u.s. has the highest number per capita of people in prison of anywhere in the world, mostly non-violent drug offendors.

5. according to this clock, the war on drugs cost already 20 billion dollars this year. not as much as the iraq war, but still a lot of money.

6. countries that have legalized drugs have much lower rates of use and abuse. there is far more drug use in america than in amsterdam.