[east1234]

“He's right. The federal war on drugs is a failure.”

Buy that doesn't mean you legalize them, you change the way you are fighting the war. Look into 19th century China, when about 1/2 the population was addicted to opium. Not a pretty picture.

[Ken H]

Here's a better example closer to home which shows what an utter failure a century of prohibition has been:

"By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict."

--http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm

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"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992."

--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

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"Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."

--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm

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The US population in 2000 was about 280,000,000. So according to the DOJ, the combined addiction rate was about 1.6% in 2000 vs 0.5% in 1900.