Of course, we never make the punishment so severe that new recruits don't replace the poor fish caught in the net. And we remain very pleased with ourselves. Pity the policy is such a failure. We can't build prisons fast enough, even though we already parole violent criminals to make room for new drug offenders. And still drug crime remains unchanged.
Truth is that moderation is sometimes the worst of all policies.
So it is with our drug policy. Our moderate approach succeeds only in keeping drugs relatively scarce. And scarcity drives up price, making drug-dealing extraordinarily profitable. It guarantees that the market will never be saturated, and the price of illicit drugs will never drop. Clearly our choices are the extreme courses.