Let me try to clarify the drug war comment without making it book length.

To call something a war means that there is an enemy of sort. The war on Cancer, the war on Terror, the war on Drugs etc.

War evokes a whole pile of emotions in people and that's the reason why that word gets a lot of use (or better put abuse) outside of its proper usage.

War is an act of violence between two nation states when diplomacy fails to resolve a conflict. A last resort, after which a state of normality (or sanity) normally resumes, this we call 'peace'.

Since you can't really make peace with Cancer, drugs or terror you can't be at war with them either. Who will negotiate the surrender, what will the terms be.

But war is such a convenient short word that politicians simply can't resist the temptation to use it, after all, if there is a war we want to be on the good side (and never mind looking too closely at what the good side is, almost by definition we are a on the good side).

So to call the war on drugs a war is disingenuous (sp?), it puts people mentally on the wrong foot and then uses their emotional response as a way to suppress their critical thinking faculties.

If they stood still long enough they'd realize that cancer cells have never declared war on us, and we can declare war back all we want it's not going to make a difference. Cancer doesn't care about us, it's just a malfunctioning of a mechanism that is built in to our cells. Normally it serves us well, when it malfunctions it turns against us. So we'd like it to go away, but because it is systemic and because the longer you live the more frequently you play the lottery of cell division the bigger the chance you'll lose. So to win the war on cancer you'd have to turn back the clock on our longer life spans.

The war on terror is similar. You can't create a world in which there are so many black vs white, with-us-or-against-us polarizing elements without having some percentage of the world population turn to radical methods of making their displeasure known. And given a world wide media that loves nothing better than carnage on a large scale these people have a great platform. The gorier the merrier as far as they're concerned, anything to drive up those ratings.

Then, the subject at hand, the war on drugs. There are people that would rather close their eyes to the reality around them, for a short while feel better than their lot in life gives them reason to, a way to escape reality. Some do this by playing games online, a world in which they can be more than in reality. Some do it by exiting this world altogether. Some get up and start changing the world around them until it suits them better and get a kick out of that. And some choose drugs. Sometimes 'softer' drugs like cannabis or piles of chocolate, sometimes harder drugs like alcohol, heroin, cocaine or whatever floats their boat.

It's systemic as well. In a world where there are so many people driven to the fringe of society, where the only way to make a killing is to do something illegal because you don't stand much chance of doing it the honest way plenty of people will take the chance to become a cog in the machine that supplies the escapists with their method of escape.

That's a societal problem, not something you're going to solve with a war. It will take time, tolerance, education and real involvement on all levels of society.

You're not going to win that by either bombing some fields, raiding some labs or by killing or busting a few people.

The only thing that will do is drive the price up because the drugs will become more scarce.