President Richard Nixon launched a “war on drugs” in 1971. The campaign against the vice of drug addiction was in apostolic succession to the prohibition amendment and Savonarola’s bonfire of the vanities.

Over the ensuing decades, a staggering $1 trillion was expended seeking to stop the epidemic of drug addiction and torrent of drugs flowing into the United States, fueled by the iron law of supply and demand. Nothing worked. The demand remained undiminished. The price remained steady. Supply chains migrated from place to place to outfox law enforcement.

The voluminous evidence was as certain as Newton’s laws of motion. The war on drugs was and remains a monumental failure. It deserves an epitaph like the prohibition amendment’s repeal.

The Central Intelligence Agency, however, purport

See Full Page