The war on drugs has been very successful in one sense.

It has succeeded in criminalising thousands of innocent people.

America dictates it's laws to other countries and forces changes to their drug laws.

What right does it have?

The right of might it seems.

America has used economic punishment and straight out warfare to enforce it's illegal and dumb-arsed prohibition.

This has interfered with the delivery of pain relief drugs for cancer and other chronic pain sufferers all around the world.

What else has it achieved?

It has created drug cartels that can not be stopped.

These bastards have made so much money since drugs were outlawed they just buy off government agency staff, police and whole Governments in poor countries.

The horror of the families with their children and loved ones rotting away in overcrowded and often inhumane jails because they had a joint at a party is another bonus.

It seems a no brain-er.

Stop the war on drugs and most of the suffering will go away without any help. Prohibition has never worked in the past.

Thousands have died in shoot outs all around the globe over the money that is made out of this black-marketing of drugs. As every government in the world should understand, you can easily stop young people from using drugs.

Educate them. Honestly. Not with reefer madness type bull-dust, they know more about it than our anti-drug lobbyists, and assume that if they lied about one drug they will have lied about all drugs, so they take dangerous amounts of dangerous drugs because of this type of low-brow crap.

Prohibition, false information which tries to scare kids out of taking drugs is a waste of time and money.

I know this much about kids: They do not scare, and the most interesting things to them are anything that is banned or forbidden.

In the current situation where it is dangerous to get caught they will try most drugs even when they know more about the dangers than the Government does!

The cost of incarcerating all these drug users is massive.

The reason the laws are in place are the same reason America is such a bully.

The God-bothering bunch of hypocrites who lobby the self serving pollies in congress and the Senate.

They have caused more damage than all the drugs could ever do.

After all most kids take it up because it is illegal, making it seem exotic and exciting, not because of the effect alone.

Decriminalize drugs and interest in them will disappear very quickly.

finally.... spend the wasted billions on medicine and mopping up the criminals.

They will be a lot easier to catch without their bribe money from the drug war to support all the bent cops and politicians who have made a nice little fortune on the side from prohibition, just as they did with alcohol, which is very dangerous and now socially acceptable.

NO you dumb arsed bureaucrats don't prohibit alcohol again!

Just say "educate"

13 years of prohibition created criminal clusters all over the United States.

The beautiful City of Chicago became a very dangerous place, but represented a very small part of the whole fiasco that was prohibition.

Why in hell would anyone think prohibition would work after that history lesson?

I have had 2 friends with cancer who have had to endure years of agony because they cannot get good drugs, as good drugs are banned for some very weird reasons.

For example a relatively clean tricyclic amineptine came on the market a few years ago. It worked very well for chronic pain sufferers, but was quickly banned when someone in America used it as a party drug.

he philosophy of the FDA seems to be If it is a clean drug with a small profile of side effects and is a mood brightener in any way, it will be deemed ubuseable and therefore banned! You must have a disease to make the drug for specifically, and even then if it works well it is banned.