It is evident to me that the War on Drugs not only has failed to eliminate drugs from society, but the prohibition of drugs itself has caused and exacerbated many problems usually contributed to drugs themselves. It seems to me, that we would get better social results if we treated drug abuse and addiction as medical problems, rather than a criminal problems.
Society can reduce the harm associated with drug abuse, rather than exacerbate the harm.
Since 1965, the United States government has criminalized and incarcerated over ten million citizens for marijuana use alone. In fact, over 465,000 American citizens were arrested and prosecuted for marijuana offenses in each of the past two years alone. This is an enormous number of people. For marijuana to be eliminated from our society completely would cause a complete breakdown of the court system and prison system. These systems are already overwhelmed, with prison construction one of the leading industries of the 1990s.