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Comment by julian37 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if these numbers are made up or have any basis in reality.

One item that caught my eye was spending on the DEA of only $3.14: Wikipedia puts yearly spending on law enforcement related to the War On Drugs at about $44 billion [1] and gross federal tax revenue for 2009 at about $2.1 trillion [2]. This works out to roughly 2% of tax revenue spent on the War On Drugs. For the $5,400 of federal income tax in the linked example that would work out to more like $100 rather than $3, no?

Of course, the Wikipedia article doesn't state how much of the $44 billion goes to the DEA and how much goes to other law enforcement agencies.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Costs_to_taxpayers

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ma...

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According to http://www.justice.gov/dea/agency/staffing.htm, we spent $2.602 billion on the DEA in 2009. That would make the naive figure $6.69. However the USA ran a $1.4 trillion dollar deficit. That means that fully 40% of federal spending was paid for by future debt, not taxpayer revenue. That reduces the figure spent on the DEA down to $4.015. As for the remaining difference, I suspect that the numbers don't count social security as a tax (officially it is not a tax, and officially money transferred from social security to the general revenue via purchases of treasury bonds is debt owed back to social security at some future point) which reduces the amount that comes out of your actual federal income taxes.

Furthermore the USA has some other forms of revenue. Such as tarriffs and fines. Put that together and I can believe that the figure given is reasonable.

DEA's budget is much smaller than total spending on the "War On Drugs" (not sure how that number is calculated; spending against illegal drug manufacturing, distribution and consumption happens at many levels of law enforcement).

Their 2009 appropriations were $2.6bn.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/agency/staffing.htm

Makes sense, but assuming that the $44bn figure in the Wikipedia article is correct I'm still wondering where the remaining ~$97 dollars are hidden. In "Military Personnel" and "Health Care Research"? I guess it goes to show that even with a fairly detailed list of expense positions, you still don't really know where your tax dollars go.

Partly in foreign aid, I bet.

I am open to correction, but as I understand it the $44 billion figure is a calculated estimate of the money being spent in total by any and all government institutions in the US, including that spent by local and state police departments and prison services to investigate, catch and incarcerate narcotics suppliers and users.

Considering the nature of the War on Drugs I'd expect most of the expenditure to be at the local and state level, but the biggest chunks at the federal level aside from the DEA's budget would probably be the proportion of Coast Guard and CBP time and resources dedicated to counter-drug operations and the military and policing aid given to countries like Mexico and Colombia. This is a bit hard to quantify though, as the Coast Guard and CBP usually conduct counter-drug operations as part of their usual duties and not all the aid being sent to Colombia and Mexico is motivated solely by the desire to contain drug production and shipment.

So you would not necessarily find the remaining funding hidden within the federal budget.

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