Over at The New Yorker there's an incredible article by Sarah Stillman about the use of young confidential informants by Narcotics Units. The piece highlights the tragic human cost of a system characterized by misaligned incentives and a paucity of oversight. The silent question that haunts the heartrending stories Stillman tells is 'what did these people die for?' The American war on drugs is expensive, consuming dollars and lives on an astounding scale, and its value is (at best) unclear, particularly when one examines the effect of decriminalization policies that countries like Portugal have put into place.
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