Despite reduced rates of reported crime for the period 1993-99, the prison population continues to grow. The annual rate of increase in the prison population is now 4.4% (down from 62%in 1990),which was still enough to generate a total of 1.8 million inmates in 1999. This amounted to an incarceration rate of 690 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants of the United States, which is five to ten times the incarceration rates of Western European countries (The Economist 1999a, 30). By 2004 the total had increased to 2.1 million, or 724 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants (Rushefsky 2008, 261). Between 1980 and 1995, the number of Americans behind bars for drug offenses increased eight times, to a total of 400,000 in 1995. Drug arrests also doubled in this period, reaching a total of 1.1 million in 1995. Despite spending $30 billion at all levels of government for drug control and two-thirds of the federal drug budget for enforcement, drug prices continue to fall. The price of cocaine is now half as much as in 1980, and heroin sells for 40% less than in it did 1989. Purity has also increase despite enforcement efforts-as supplier efficiency has increased (The Economist 1999a, 71).