Where punishment often fails, appropriate and high-quality drug treatment often works. A study conducted for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, for example, found treatment to be 15 times more cost-effective than law enforcement at reducing cocaine abuse. Imprisonment costs an average of $30,000 per person per year, while treatment can cost as little as $4,000. (Another study found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers more than seven dollars in societal costs (CSAT 1997).
In the 1980s, many new American drug laws resulted from escalating efforts to "get tougher" on drugs and drug users. During the height of voter fear generated by the crack cocaine epidemic, state and federal lawmakers dramatically increased both prosecutorial power and criminal sanctions in drug cases. Common measures included: greatly lengthened prison sentences; removal of discretion from judges through mandatory minimum sentencing schemes and strict guideline systems; expansion of conspiracy laws to include people only peripherally involved in an offense; loosening of the evidentiary requirements to prove conspiracy; and "school-zone" sentencing enhancements that apply to a large percentage of all drug cases in many urban areas, although the majority of such cases do not involve minors or take place on school grounds .
Twenty three years later, these policies have had significant effects on the criminal justice system, most of them negative. The United States now incarcerates more than 450,000 people for nonviolent drug offenses - more than the entire European Union (with roughly 100 million more people) incarcerates for all criminal offenses combined. The vast majority of these offenders are in state and local jails and prisons, where they now account for almost one-fourth of the total population behind bars. Additionally, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of non-drug offenders on probation or parole are imprisoned or re-imprisoned each year for nothing more than testing positive for drug use or an arrest for simple drug possession (Brownsberger, Aromaa 2001).