Cook County board head calls for end to drug war
CHICAGO (AP) - The Cook County Board president has declared the decades-long war on drug a failure.
Toni Preckwinkle, speaking during a Chicago rally Friday, says the effort has resulted in the incarceration of millions of non-violent offenders, most of whom African-American and Latino. She says the cost of the war on drugs is too great to continue.
According to Preckwinkle, it costs nearly $150 a day to detain people in Cook County Jail. She said the money would be better served being invested in treatment, education and job-skills training.
Hundreds gathered to denounce the war on drugs 40 years after it was declared by then-President Richard Nixon.
A Roosevelt University study out this week indicates Illinois leads the nation in incarcerating a greater percentage of African-Americans for drug crimes than whites.
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