The really tragic thing is that there are some passionate and well meaning conservatives that don't understand why liberals don't back ending the War on Drugs. They love the Police State architecture it provides. They'd support it if it was a War on Potpourri, Hip Hop music or LoLcat photos. What they gain far outstrips what they lose.
Not that we are any better. Rather than trust to education, personal responsibility and the basic notion that freedom is worth the occasional mess, many conservatives prefer the idea of a stomping a boot on the necks of people they consider sinners.
All well and good, until the liberals shift the laws a little more, and the boot winds up on FReeper necks for 'extremist website viewing'. Liberals think that conservatism is a sin, and lucky for us, we're already in the buisness of the government policing your soul.
The War on Drugs, at best, is conservatives pandering to old Puritan instincts instead of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, and at worst, is a mechanism for liberals to enforce political control, once they finally seize power for good.
Well said.