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Adding the ONDCP numbers for cocaine and heroin addiction together yields an addiction rate of about 1.5%. So after a century of increasingly aggressive prohibition, our own government is telling us that addiction has gone from 0.5% in 1900 to 1.5% in 2000. Which historical example is more relevant to the US in 2012, Chinese history from 1900 or American history from 1900?

Not sure why or how you are trying to twist this. Bottom line, China went from very low addiction to very high addiction between the time Britain started importing opium and the time it stopped. On the other hand, We nipped it in the bud back around 1900 and as a result of the war on drugs, our addiction rate is still only 1.5%, and that's by YOUR numbers.

You are simply re-proving the same point I am making. The war on drugs is a HUGE success, because we didn't end up with 20% of our population addicted to drugs.

Bottom line, China went from very low addiction to very high addiction between the time Britain started importing opium and the time it stopped. On the other hand, We nipped it in the bud back around 1900 and as a result of the war on drugs, our addiction rate is still only 1.5%, and that's by YOUR numbers.

We nipped nothing in the bud. Drugs were legal in the US since colonial times, yet no one saw it as a problem for fedgov to handle until the progressives came along.

If you'll read the DEA link I provided, you'll see that addiction to opium was high in 1880 due to addiction by Civil War veterans - 400,000 in a population of 50M. That's 0.8% addicted to opium alone.

Yet by 1900, says the DEA, the addiction rate to either cocaine or opium was 0.5%. That's a significant decline that would be even greater if they had not included cocaine addicts in the 1900 figure.

So from 1880 to 1900, when drugs were legal, addiction fell. From 1900 to 2000 addiction rose. Your argument that prohibition nipped a growing problem in the bud is not credible.