Citations for 11 Ways the War on Drugs is Hurting Your Business

Eric E. Sterling

Updated June 2012

1. Visa Inc. Visa internal statistics, Q4 2006, http://usa.visa.com/merchants/new_acceptance/benefits/index.html

2. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, January 2010 , http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php#ixzz1pJFQfHvN 

3. Jeffrey A. Miron & Kathrine Waldock, The Budgetary Impact of Drug Prohibition, 2010. p.8, http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf

4. Jennifer C. Karberg, Christopher J. Mumola, U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Use And Dependence, State And Federal Prisoners, 2004, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=778

5. Redonna Chandler, PhD, Bennett W. Fletcher, PhD, Nora D. Volkow, MD, Treating Drug Abuse and Addiction in the Criminal Justice System: Improving Health and Safety, Journal of the American Medical Association, http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=301&issue=2&page=183.

6. Martin Killias and Marcelo F. Aebi, Crime Prevention Studies, The Impact of Heroin Prescription on Heroin Markets in Switzerland, Crime Prevention Studies vol. 11 pp. 89-99,http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_11/04-Killias.pdf.

7. Office of National Drug Control Policy, How Illicit Drug Use Affects Business and the Economy, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets/how-illicit-drug-use-affects-business-and-the-economy

8. The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet, http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7029-08.pdf

9. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Basic Statistics, http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm

10. The National Center for Victims of Crime, Impact on Communities,  http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/AGP.Net/Components/documentViewer/Download.aspxnz?DocumentID=41158

11.The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second. State and local governments spent at least another 25 billion dollars. (we adjusted this to 30 billion due to Dr. Miron underestimating the cost of marijuana enforcement). 

Federal Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy, A 21st Century Drug Policy, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp

State Source: Jeffrey A. Miron & Kathrine Waldock, The Budgetary Impact of Drug Prohibition, 2010, http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf

12. Associated Press, After 40 Years, $1 Trillion, US War on Drugs has failed to meet any of its goals, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/

13. Monitoring the Future: A Study in American Youth, Trends in Availability of Drugs as Perceived by 12th Graders, http://monitoringthefuture.org/data/11data/pr11t14.pdf

14. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Unintentional Drug Poisoning in the 
United States, http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/pdf/poison-issue-brief.pdf

15. Office of National Drug Control Policy, The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs: 1981 Through the Second Quarter of 2003,https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/pdf/price_purity.pdf

16. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Annual Report: 2011, www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/files/annual_report_fy2011.pdfj

17. Santa Clara Law Review, Redefining the Bank Secrecy Act: Currency Reporting and the Crime of Structuring, 2010, http://www.orrick.com/fileupload/2608.pdf

18. Ed Vulllamy, The Guardian: The Observer, How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs, 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

19. National Restaurant Association, Facts at a Glance,  http://www.restaurant.org/research/facts/

20. Trading Economics, United States Imports, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports