Why has the U.S. continued a "demand-side" war on drugs in light of poor results?

Question

The U.S. has been conducting a "demand-side" war on drugs for decades.
Some results:
1) Narcotics traffic into the U.S. has increased during this time.
2) Federal and state tax commitments for the policing and incarceration of non-violent drug offenders have skyrocketed.
3) In some recent instances, e.g. fentanyl-laced heroin, kids choosing to experiment are DYING because they are at the mercy of criminal vendors, i.e. no quality-control of sold chemicals.

If the costs and results of this program were audited within any for-profit corporation, the board of directors would have fired the management years ago. In the least, investors would have screamed to halt the program or cut off its funding in light of the lack of success.

What would be the likely costs and effects of removing the profit-motive for the traffickers by legalizing, taxing, and providing oversight for some of the less harmful street-drugs (turn them into standard commodities subject to free-market economics)?

Answer 1

The 'war on drugs' isn't a rational fight against a social ill. It's something that plays well on TV, especially to people who don't know much about it, but are afraid.

Talking tough makes politicians look good and the scared and uneducated feel safe. Whether the policy works or not has little to do with it.

Witness current policy on, well, just about everything.

Answer 2

The demand-side of the war on drugs wasn't born in a vacuum; it followed several decades of equally unsuccessful supply-side war on drugs.

There is a strong argument for legalization of drugs (after all, they used to be legal in most countries before 1900; in fact, heroin and aspirin were developed and marketed by the same company, Bayer AG of Germany).

The problem is, cheap and accessible drugs will affect the society unevenly. Poor neighborhoods will probably see a large drop in drug-related crime, while incidence of drug use among middle-class teenagers and young adults may increase, because they will be able to buy drugs with pocket change. Middle-class parents fear the latter (whether this fear is rational or not remains to be seen), so they vote for anything that has even a remote chance of helping keep drugs away from their children...

Answer 3

interesting question, but the thing at the bottom of all this is Politics. No elected official is going to have support (read: get re-elected or elected in the first place) with a sensible drug policy like that. The aging, naive, and morally-anal voting base would never hear of such a thing, plus their opponent in an election would have a field day with something like that.
Its not that I blame the voters for being naive, because theyve been spoon fed so much nonsence propaganda thru the years like "this is your brain on drugs" ad, and the "xtc puts holes in your brain" biased and false study, etc.

Answer 4

Legalization with controls seems to me to be the way to go. Even for the "Hard" drugs. It is the suppliers that really make the money and if you remove the illegal demand..... OK? I believe that our gov't allows the free flow of drugs as a way to "control an entire population. The more criminals there are the less likely they are to protest politically.

Answer 5

The US is less interested in controlling drugs than it is in propping up the military-industrial complex. The so called "war on drugs" is just welfare for weapons makers and the mercenary social class.