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Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know
by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken
The plummeting street price of many illegal drugs over the last few decades is compelling evidence that interdiction has not done much to stem supply. Drug overdoses have increased almost six-fold in the last thirty years. They are now the leading cause of accidental death in the United Sates, having surpassed motor vehicle accidents for the first time in 2011.
But, this is by and large due to a huge increase in prescription drug overdoses: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6101a3.htm Since 2003, more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined (Figure 2)
Interesting article, but its assumptions about prison populations are strange.
The drug war is having a measureable effect on prison population, and specifically African Americans. I know it's wiki, but there are sources here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_War_on_Drugs) that basically delineate how the drug war is by proxy a war on black people and it's having a much greater knock on effect on the black population of america than the white.