As a student of history I have a few drug war facts [not opinions] to share. I will be putting forth many absolutes so it's possible – but not likely – I could be wrong:

1] Every society that has instituted drug prohibition has experienced substantial increases in drug use, drug abuse, drug addiction, crime, violence, public corruption and societal disintegration. These outcomes are as certain as the fact that if you practice your home run swing on a bear's ass you will get mauled. Prohibition is never a response to these outcomes: it is the cause of these outcomes.

2] Prohibition is always revolves around movements against abuses of power to divert attention from cause of abuse to defame those in the movement using false associations. Check your history and you will see that I am right. Prohibition serves a dual purpose in that enforcement is always directed towards those who are being abused.

3] While the financial costs are shared; the human costs are borne by those with little power. Ironically, many advocates collect tax free money using resources to facilitate drug traffic for gangs. A disproportionate share of addicts and crime victims live elsewhere.

4] Drug war advocates are never well intentioned. The dire effects are certain – but directed elsewhere. It has everything to do with retaining political power at any cost.

On IQ tests “always” and “never” are rarely the right answers. On drug war facts they work so well because prohibitionists lack a moral compass.

    A case in point is our Prohibition era. It had next to nothing to do with the Women's Christian Temperance movement and everything to do with the movement towards labor unionism, socialism, and workplace and business reforms. Instead of addressing these legitimate concerns those in power called in the police to use heavy handed coercive tactics resulting in violence - that was later attributed to drunkenness and alcohol problems. In one fell swoop they energized the religious zealots to work for alcohol prohibition and the eighteenth amendment. The resultant crime and violence were the expected results with enforcement directed towards working class neighborhoods. The protest against the Vietnam intervention was much more obvious with stories of rampant drug abuse among protesters that had little to do with reality - but created the false association between dissent and drug abuse. Drug war advocates always use sporadic incidences involving deliberate drug abuse to leverage a call for a total ban.  

        We have actually had real bans on drugs with harmful effects when used responsibly. Those bans did not cause problems because they made sense. Our current War on Drugs has nothing to do with that kind of ban. As I state in my book, our government represents atypical bad results involving deliberate abuse by people prone to violence or subjected to abuses of power as typical of responsible use. Drug companies conversely represent typical harmful effects involving prescribed usage as atypical in order to sell more drugs. It has nothing to do with public interest and everything to do with power and money.