THE WAR ON DRUGS
Money wasted: $37 billion-plus
State and federal governments have spent $37.3 billion and counting this year on the war on drugs that haven’t produced noticeable results in more than 40 years. That’s without counting the funds spent curbing drug production abroad, as in Afghanistan, where the government has spent more than $8 billion on counternarcotics efforts since 2002, but failed to stop the nation’s rapid increase in poppy production.