Trying to calculate the amount of money America has expensed fighting drugs gave me headaches.  If every piece of existing financial data were to be stacked tight inside containers of 18-wheelers, we'd have ourselves a country-mile convoy.  But even with the brightest green-eyeshade guys doing the diligence, that old adage "figures lie and liars figure" would make finding a hard number difficult.  That we have so far spent hundreds of billions seems a safe bet, but what we have spent is not the point.  What we will spend is the more sobering number, and should be our focus.

Let's begin with the year 2003.  It took an aspirin or two, but I figure fifty billion to be a fair estimate, though some claim it much higher.  Yet I doubt anyone knowledgeable in this area would claim it less, or deny drug budgets increase every year.  But to illustrate my point, I've chosen a more conservative number for 2003: forty billion.  To that amount I have added a modest 8% yearly increase, and calculated America's cost over the next ninety years, borne partly by us baby boomers but laid heavily upon our children and theirs.

To keep things simple, we'll examine ten years at a time.  In the year 2013, with many boomers still footing the bill, our drug budget will be eighty billion, doubling.  More telling is that by the end of 2013, our aggregate spending for the decade will total five hundred thirty-nine billion, six hundred million dollars.  That's nearly enough to fund the entire Medicare prescription drug plan.  Sorry, mom.  And we'll have more crime, though the percentage of addicts will remain fairly static, same for recreational users.