Over the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has cost more than $1 trillion and accounted
for over 45 million arrests.
The U.S. holds 25% of the world’s prisoners, yet accounts for
only 5% of the world’s population.
Black individuals comprise 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of drug users, yet they are 37%
of the people arrested for drug offenses and 56% of those incarcerated for drug crimes.
As America remains embroiled in conflict overseas, a less visible war is taking place at
home, costing countless lives, destroying families, and inflicting untold damage upon
future generations of Americans. In forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for
more than 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer, and damaged poor
communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more
available today than ever before.
Filmed in more than twenty states, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN captures heart-wrenching
stories from individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the
grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the
film offers a penetrating look inside America’s longest war—a definitive portrait
revealing its profound human rights implications.
The film recognizes the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, and
investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have meant this symptom is most
often treated as a cause for law enforcement, creating a vast machine that largely feeds
on America’s poor, and especially on minority communities. Beyond simple misguided
policy, the film examines how political and economic corruption have fueled the war for
40 years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.
More at: http://www.thehouseilivein.org/files/THE%20HOUSE%20I%20LIVE%20IN%20FinalPressNotes10.08.12.pdf