<blockquote>Despite the fact that the war on drugs is increasingly<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/war-on-drugs-costs-poll_n_2504162.html"> politically unpopular </a>and an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/business/in-rethinking-the-war-on-drugs-start-with-the-numbers.html?pagewanted=all">objective failure</a>, federal aid to state and local law enforcement shows governments at all levels are doubling down on this colossal public policy disaster. The pain of the drug war isn’t only measured in lives lost to <a href="https://www.aclu.org/combating-mass-incarceration-facts-0">incarceration</a>, the <a href="http://ibw21.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/DrugWarCriminalizesYouth.pdf">criminalization of youth of color</a> and the poor, the <a href="https://www.drugpolicy.org/wasted-tax-dollars">waste of scarce public resources</a>, or premature <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helena-hansen/drug-overdose-deaths_b_4795110.html">deaths</a>. The drug war is also directly <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/police-militarization-an-interview-with-radley-balko">militarizing local police </a>and worsening an already substantial <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/surveillance-lawenforcementnsastringray3.html">secrecy problem</a> at departments statewide.</blockquote>
via <a href="http://www.privacysos.org/swat#secrecy">Our Homes Are Not Battlefields: Reversing the Militarization &amp; Federalization of Local Police in Massachusetts | Privacy SOS</a>.