In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, and U.S. taxpayers have been funding the campaign for more than 40 years. According to the Associated Press, spending for the Drug War in 2010 was $15.5 billion at the federal level. Today the U.S. is the most highly incarcerated society in the world with 2.3 million Americans behind bars. About one-quarter of them are there for drug-related offenses.