The federal government spends about $30 billion a year on the war on drugs. Much of the spending is wasteful and counterproductive. This week, for example, an auditor’s report revealed how the drug bureaucracy flushed $86 million down the drain on an anti-drug aircraft that was never used.

The Washington Post described this Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of Defense (DOD) boondoggle:

The plan was for DOD to modify a DEA plane to be used in counter-narcotics operations in a combat zone. … The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (IG) determined “collectively, the DEA and DOD spent more than $86 million to purchase and modify a DEA aircraft with advanced surveillance equipment to conduct operations in the combat environment of Afghanistan, in what became known as the Global Discovery Program. We found that more than 7 years after the aircraft was purchased for the program, it remains inoperable, resting on jacks in Delaware, and has never flown in Afghanistan.”

The IG found that the “program has cost almost four times its original anticipated amount of $22 million.” Sadly, this sort of failure is par for the course when it comes to federal capital investments. 

Thank goodness for the IGs who uncover such waste, but what will come of these findings? Will anyone be fired? Will policymakers begin to rethink the drug war? Not yet it seems. When the Washington Post asked the DEA and DOD about the report, “the Pentagon did not reply and the DEA response was short boilerplate.”

For more on the government’s drug war, see Jeff Miron’s work here.