WAR ON DRUGS VS. SPACE PROGRAM

John Glenn is now in space.

Some have criticized his participation in this launch as nothing more than
an expensive public relations effort for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. Let's make a little comparison between this effort and,
say, the war on drugs.

The entire cost to build the space shuttle Glenn went up in is $1.7 billion.

This trip will cost about $450 million. For comparison's sake, the war on
drugs costs about $50 billion per year. And what do we get for all this
money?

Any eighth grader with a $20 bill can easily score drugs.

We've destroyed our criminal-justice system and overburdened our penal and
law-enforcement systems. For the money we have frittered away on the drug
war over the last 20 years we could have put up the space station, had space
shuttles all over the solar system and likely had money left over to rebuild
our schools and repair all the potholes in the nation. I cannot think of
one positive result of the decades of wasted effort and resources poured
into the drug war. At the very least the space program gave us Tang.
Godspeed, John Glenn.

Checked-by: Don Beck