There are almost half a million Americans behind bars today for breaking a drug law. The United States incarcerates more people for drug law violations than Western Europe incarcerates for everything, and they have more people than we do. There were 50,000 people behind bars on drug charges in America in 1980; now we have almost a tenfold increase. Yet extraordinarily few politicians are talking about that.

CNN Chat Transcript on August 1, 2000. - The War on Drugs

Ethan Nadelmann - CNN (August 1, 2000)