Welcome to Profits Unchained!

Welcome to Profits Unchained!

In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, on behalf of all of America, declared war on “drugs.” Like most declarations of war, the war on drugs was a response to an immediate threat. There was the perception that the health and moral character of our citizenry were under assault. Large numbers of soldiers in Vietnam were becoming addicted to heroin. Young people had been smoking marijuana at Woodstock, and now they were getting stoned in their backyards and on college quads.  However, as the war continues into its 42^nd year, there has been expensive collateral damage (unemployment, disease, stigmatization, etc.) from the policies. This is in addition to the enormous direct cost to the American taxpayer of paying for police, prosecutors, prisons, the interdiction efforts along the borders and coasts, and the international efforts, such as a war in Panama to take out its drug dealing dictator Manuel Noriega.

Real wars – winnable wars – come to an end. After World War II, Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan lay in ruin, lacking the will and capacity to further harm the global community. Domestically, the United States economy flourished as consumer demand skyrocketed and government investments improved productivity and economic vitality. This was a time of growth and entrepreneurship.

The war on drugs has not ended. There is no enemy in ruin. Drugs are more potent and new drugs proliferate through our communities at increasing rates (Ecstasy, GHB, Oxycontin, “Spice,” Salvia, “bath salts,” etc.). Hundreds of billions of tax dollars have been spent incarcerating members of our American workforce and eliminating business receipts. During the 1970’s, the United States housed 250,000 persons in jail or prison. Today, America incarcerates 2.2 million – roughly nine times the number of forty years past.

The failed policy of mass incarceration and mass criminal conviction has had a crippling effect on many levels of our economy. Increasing federal, state and local criminal justice expenditures have diverted funds away from investments that maintain a productive workforce and incentivize commercial risk and free enterprise. American businesses suffer unrealized profits and increased operating costs as consumer demand is stunted and insurance costs rise from drug crime.

Profits Unchained will tell the story of the economic price paid by ordinary citizens, retirees, investors, workers and business owners as a result of our poorly conceived war on drugs.

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