During the 1970s it became apparent that the war on drugs was winning few, if any, battles. New avenues for supply and demand reduction were added such as Coast Guard, Customs, and Drug Enforcement Administration operatives charged with intercepting drug shipments into the United States from foreign ports. On the surface, none of these strategies seemed to have an effect on illicit drug use.

In 1988 The White House anti-drug policy was “zero-tolerance”. Zero tolerance meant: (1) that if there were no drug abusers there would be no drug problem, (2) that the market for drugs is created not only by availability,

Although men still far outnumber women in arrests for drug related crimes, women represent the fasted growing population of people being imprisoned for drug offenses. Since 1986 the number of women in prison has increased 400%. For women of color the rise is 800% (MacCoun, Rueter, 2001). Women are also serving harsher sentences. Women often incur long sentences precisely because they refuse, or are unable, to give prosecutors evidence about their husband's or boyfriend's crimes and connections. Indeed, a 1997 review of over 60,000 federal drug cases by the Minneapolis Star Tribune shows that men are more likely to sell out their women to get a shorter sentence than vice versa.

It is often asserted that these arrests rarely lead to any substantial penalty, and that therefore the costs of the current high-arrest policy both to those arrested and to the correctional system, are modest. Some recent figures from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) cast doubt on that assertion. Calculations based on recent BJS reports suggest that, at any one time, 59,300 prisoners charged with or convicted of violating marijuana laws (3.3% of the total incarcerated population) are behind bars, at a total cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year. They represent almost 12% of the total federal prison population and about 2.7% of the state prison population. Of the people incarcerated in federal and state prison and in local jails, 37,500 were charged with marijuana offenses only and an additional 21,800 with both marijuana offenses and other controlled-substance offenses. Of the marijuana-only offenders, 15,400 are incarcerated for possession, not trafficking (Marijuana Policy Project Foundation, 2004).

but by demand, (3) that drug abuse starts as a willful act, (4) that the perception that drug users are powerless to act against the drug availability and peer pressure is an erroneous one, (5) that most illegal drug users can choose to their behaviors and must be held responsible if they do not, (6) that individual freedom does not include the right to self and societal destruction, (7) that public tolerance for drug abuse must be reduced to zero (Drug Abuse Report, April 19, 1988: 6; Drug Abuse Report, May 3,1988: 1-3;U.S. Department of Transportation, 1988).

Current legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco have a far worse effect on the body than marijuana. No evidence exists that anyone has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Tests performed on mice have shown that the ratio of cannabinoids (the chemicals in marijuana that make you stoned) necessary for overdose to the amount necessary for intoxication is 40,000:1. For comparison's sake, that ratio for alcohol is generally between 4:1 and 10:1. Alcohol overdoses kill about 5,000 yearly but marijuana overdoses kill no one as far as anyone can tell (MacCoun, Rueter, 2001).

The benefits of marijuana prohibition and its enforcement have long been the subject of debate. For example, a National Academy of Sciences report recently concluded that "there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use”. However one judges the merits of that debate, the latest figures cast serious doubt on the argument that marijuana incarceration costs are low enough to be ignored.

The racial inequalities of the war on drugs also disproportionately affect pregnant women of color. Despite similar or equal rates of illegal drug use during pregnancy, African American women are ten times more likely to be reported to child welfare agencies for prenatal drug use. In a recent Supreme Court case, Ferguson vs. the City of Charleston, the practice of drug testing pregnant women without their consent and prosecuting the mothers for "distributing an illegal substance" to an unborn child through the umbilical cord was challenged under the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Out of the 30

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