Drug War Cost Clock courtesy of actionamerica.org/drugs

Drug War Cost Clock released
as Macintosh Dashboard Widget

January Snapshot of
Drug War Cost Clock Widget
(See links down the page on the left to download the tool)
If you use a Macintosh, running OS-X 10.4 "Tiger" and are concerned about the the government's continuation of the failed War on Drugs and its cost to taxpayers, you might want to download our Drug War Cost Clock widget (v06.1.0). It is the widget form of the clock that appears at the top of this page, just below the menu. The major version number (the first two digits) represents the budget year upon which calculations are based. The rest of the version number represents the actual software version.

Using data from the two most authoritative sources available, on the the monetary cost of the Drug War, it displays the amount of money that the government has spent, since the beginning of this year, in the bogus name of fighting the Drug War. Unfortunately, there is no way to calculate the devastating social costs of the government abuses that the Drug War has spawned, like making the United States the nation that imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other nation on Earth.

Based upon budget data for the year 2006, this widget ticks over $1,620.37 each and every second of every day, as a visual reminder of just how much of our money the government is wasting on a Drug War that has only resulted in an increase in the availability of drugs to our children, a significant increase in drug related violence and a severe reduction in our rights, under the color of fighting the War on Drugs. The back side of the widget has a scrollable window that details where the data for these calculations originated. The widget expands, when flipped over, to make it easier to read the details and returns to normal size, when flipped back to the front.

The number that we use for our calculations is slightly lower than other cost numbers that you may find cited by various sources, because it is our policy at Action America to only use the most conservative numbers that we can positively stand behind, in such cases. When two equally authoritative sources disagree by a small number, as often happens, we will always use the lower number. It's not that we want to help the government look any less incompetent. We just don't want to inject our bias into the numbers. We want you to know where the numbers come from, so you can make up your own mind on how bad the situation really is.

This widget will automatically reset every January. However, that will not update the new budget numbers that climb ever higher each year. For that, we plan to release a new version, in the coming months, which will update the Drug War budget numbers, from a file on our web site, with each years's changing budget.

The federal part of that number comes directly from the Whitehouse Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy Budgets (2003-2006), which indicates that the federal government will spend at least $20.4 billion on the Drug War this in 2006.

The state portion comes from a report titled, "Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets", authored by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, in 2001, which on page 3, shows that states spent $30.7 billion in 1998 on "the burden of substance abuse on the justice system -- for incarceration, probation and parole, juvenile justice and criminal and family court costs of substance involved offenders". Simply due to inflation, that number has probably gone up since that 1998 report was published, but because we want to stick with only solid numbers and stay conservative in any assumptions, we use only that $30.7 billion number for our calculations in this widget. Should more recent information become available, it will be included in a future release of this widget.

It's important to note that after a federal budget calling for more than $19.2 billion dollars for the War on Drugs in FY 2003, the Whitehouse decided that they had to down-play how much the government was wasting on the failed War on Drugs. So, in February of 2002, the same month that the Whitehouse issued the FY 2003 Drug War budget, they revised the drug budget structure, effectively hiding a significant portion of future Drug War costs in other areas of the budget. The result was as follows.

The FY 2003 federal budget called for $19.2 Billion for drug control. The FY 2004 drug control budget called for only $11.7 billion, yet called it an increase of $440.3 million over the President's FY 2003 request of $11.2 billion. This is interesting, since the President's FY 2003 budget actually requested $19.2 billion, not $11.2 billion, as the FY 2004 budget suggests. By just "saying" that they requested less money for the Drug War, than they really spent in the previous year, they magically make $8 billion disappear into other areas of the budget. Can you say, "spin"?

Since the budget items that were moved off of the drug control budget were costs that were definately related to the War on Drugs, we had to come up with a reasonable means to get those numbers back into the total. So you will understand the validity of our numbers, here is what we have done. We started with the $19.2 billion in the FY 2003 budget and added the amount of the increase in drug control spending, as stated in each successive year's budget. A study of each of those budgets reveals that in 2004 and 2005, federal Drug War (actual) spending increased by $900 million and $100 million respectively. The 2006 budget requests $200 million over the prior year, to prosecute the War on Drugs. Adding the "stated" increase for each successive year to the FY 2003 Drug War budget, shows that the federal government expects to spend $20.4 billion in taxpayer money, to prosecute the failed War on Drugs, in 2006.

Add that to the $30.7 billion that the states will spend and it means that the War on Drugs will cost American taxpayers $1,620.37 each and every second of 2006.

The Drug War Cost Clock widget is designed to be CPU friendly. In order to maximize functionality and minimize overhead, the widget recalculates every time you open Dashboard and continues only for as long as Dashboard is open. Even though the calculations use a trivial amount of CPU time, as a courtesy, this widget stops calculating, when the Dashboard is hidden.

If you have a Mac and you are running Tiger, just download the zip file here (592kb), unzip it and drag the widget to your widgets folder. That's all there is to it. It will be instantly available on your Dashboard. As you move the cursor over the widget, you will see an italic " i " appear in the upper right corner. Click on the " i " to flip it over and see information about the widget.

Also, if you don't have a Mac, but just happen to know someone who does and is concerned about the terrible turn that the War on Drugs has taken, direct him to this page.

For more information on the failed War on Drugs and what can be done to improve matters, read our article The War on Drugs - Solution or Problem?

You might also want to check out the other widgets that Action America has produced. Visit our Downloads page.