It certainly is another way to rationalize “War on X” where “X” is the demonized (and often, but not always, inanimate) thing of the day. X could be pot, liquor, guns, dissent, Jews... (yeah, color me biased, I visited a Holocaust memorial the other day).
Not sure how you figure this is rationalization. The History of China and drugs is available for anyone who cares to look at it.
Beyond that, we have the more recent experiment in Switzerland. That was an utter failure too.