Gil Kerlikowske, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, took questions from the foreign press this morning surrounding the
“„Calling it a war really limits your resources. And, essentially, the greatest resource in a war is some type of force. Looking at this as both a public safety problem and a public health problem seems to make a lot more sense.
“„I know, in talking about these policies with my colleagues, former colleagues — police chiefs and sheriffs and the directors of state police authorities throughout the country — they have become quite frustrated at recycling people through a criminal justice system.
“„We also know that … incarceration is very expensive, and that if there are treatment programs — and we know there are — that can be successful in treating drug addiction and keeping communities safe, that those treatment programs are about one-half the cost of incarceration.