FAILED DRUG 'WAR'

Thousands of lives lost and more than $2 trillion later, the
40-year-old U.S. "war on drugs" has become a lost cause steeped in
senseless stratagems and without any end in sight.

U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske admits the problems have only
"intensified." And the Obama administration has increased the nation's
drug-control budget to $15.1 billion.

Adjusted for inflation, that's 31 times the amount President Nixon
authorized when he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and
Control Act in 1970. The Associated Press reports the casualties:

. $20 billion to ineffectually fight drug gangs in their home
countries, $6 billion of which was spent in Colombia, where drug
production increased and trafficking moved to Mexico.

. $33 billion for the abysmally failed "Just Say No" campaign, which
has had no impact on drug use.

. $49 billion to stem drug flow at the border even though there are 10
million more U.S. illegal drug users today than in 1970.

America is firing blanks in a conflict it cannot possibly
win.

Time has come to stop filling prisons with nonviolent drug abusers.
Eliminate ineffectual federal drug agencies and campaigns. And hit the
drug cartels where it will be felt most by decriminalizing marijuana
and regulating it.

Reason dictates changes in U.S. drug policy. Forty years of overheated
"war" rhetoric have won nothing.