Drug offenders represent the largest source of our prison population growth, and more than half of federal inmates are drug offenders. More than a half-million people are currently serving prison time for non-violent drug offenses and one third of all women in jail are serving time for a non-violent drug conviction. One out of every nine young black men in America lives in a prison. The direct cost of this imprisonment exceeds $14 billion annually, and the additional law enforcement support costs drive the yearly tab to well beyond $40 billion.

This year, about two million people will be arrested for a drug offense.  . . .  These policies have amounted to nothing short of a genocide. Millions of supposedly free Americans – most of them poor black Americans – have been arrested, imprisoned, and had their hopes and futures destroyed – all for possessing the moral equivalent of a bottle of wine.