Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 18, 2010

Mr Crook, I for one do advocate such. The “war on drugs” is just a tired rehashing of the failed policy of Prohibition. It’s created the same issues (more violence though) and hasn’t done a thing to stop personal use of most of the drugs covered by the controlled substances list. The list also continues to grow longer as each time a substance, naturally produced or otherwise is found which gives the user a measure of what he/she wants, the Federal government moves to ban it by adding it to the list. I would take bets at high odds that more people have been killed in the war on drugs than have died due to illicit drug use. But of course we know that the war on drugs is big business for police departments, prison systems and the like as much of the operating budgets for many of these institutions depend heavily on money raised by the Constitutionally shaky seizure of property in drug busts.