George Melloan, of the Wall Street Journal, offers his Musings About the War on Drugs:
Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, making the trade immensely profitable — tax-free, of course. The more the U.S. spends on interdiction, the more incentive it creates for taking the risk of running drugs.In 1933, the U.S. finally gave up on the 13-year prohibition of alcohol — a drug that is by some measures more intoxicating and dangerous to health than marijuana. That effort to alter human behavior left a legacy of corruption, criminality, and deaths and blindness from the drinking of bad booze. America’s use of alcohol went up after repeal but no serious person today suggests a repeat of the alcohol experiment. Yet prohibition is still being attempted, at great expense, for the small portion of the population — perhaps little more than 5% — who habitually use proscribed drugs.