He is absolutely right about that. He's also right in saying that Americans will never go for Mao's way. All we will see are half measures that are bound to be costly and doomed to fail. The “total war” necessary to win or at least cut drug use down substantially and therefore shrink the black market for drugs and the illegals drugs industry down to a fraction of what it is will never be fought here. You can't have that in a free society.
I don't know about Milton Friedman's way either though. Do we really want to legalize drugs like meth and heroin? I don't, but we can make the illegal drug trade much less of a problem simply by legalizing marijuana and only marijuana. That's the drug that most all drug users use. Americans consume more pot than all other illegal drugs combined. We have a huge black market for drugs, but mostly that black market is a black market for marijuana. Most of the participants, users and sellers, are involved with marijuana. If we regulate production and sales and take it out of the black market the black market for illegal drugs will shrink to something much more manageable. There will be far fewer participants in the black market for drugs, fewer users, fewer sellers, and a whole lot less money.
If you look at production estimates, estimates on the value of the market for drugs, for this country and the world over, marijuana is number one. No other illegal drug comes close in the number of users or the amount of money being generated in the market. And specifically when we talk about Mexican drug cartels, marijuana is their cash cow. ONDCP head John Walters said that marijuana is their “bread and butter, “the center of gravity” for Mexican drug cartels. The ONDCP estimated that about 62% of the money the Mexican cartels gross from drugs bound for the U.S. comes from marijuana. About 28% comes from cocaine, but they are only the middlemen for cocaine which must first be purchased and smuggled from South America before it can be smuggled into this country. Marijuana may very well provide these organizations with more than 62% of their net proceeds from drug sales to Americans.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html
I think we do have some success with the war on drugs but mostly it's with drugs other than marijuana. We're able to keep drugs like cocaine, meth and heroin expensive and to varying degrees we're able to make them not so easy to come by. We're not even accomplishing that with marijuana. It's cheap on a per use basis and almost as easy to get as beer. We're failing miserably with marijuana. We're blowing a fortune trying in vain to keep up the ban. We're enriching organized crime to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. We're creating a situation where corruption is rampant, where millions of people have disrespect for law enforcement and the rule of law in general. We're doing a lot more harm than good in so many ways. We'd be much better off if we just regulated the production and sales of marijuana, tax it and use our money, efforts and resources fighting more pressing battles. Marijuana is just not such a threat that it is worth it to keep this incredibly costly battle going.
I don't know about where you live but in CA we already have legal "medical" marijuana.