If only we were as smart as the people in the 1930's.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Prohibition Was Not an Awful Flop:

"...to decide whether banning booze was a good policy, which is what the DEA seems to be arguing, it's not enough to know whether it reduced drinking. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that paternalism can be justified on a utilitarian basis, you need to know whether the benefit from fewer alcohol-related problems outweighed the costs associated with prohibition, including the loss of privacy and freedom, black-market violence, official corruption, disrespect for the law, injuries and deaths from illicit alcohol, and the strengthening of organized crime. A consensus developed during Prohibition that, whatever its benefits might be, they were not worth these costs. By that measure, alcohol prohibition in the 1920s and early '30s, like drug prohibition today, was a failure, even if it 'worked' in the sense that it discouraged drinking.

It's hard to take prohibitionists seriously when they act as if the policy they favor carries no costs. But by pining for the days of Al Capone and methanol-tainted rotgut, at least the DEA is being consistent."

And on the cognitive dissonance and black/white zero sum thinking of the drug "warriors."

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Measuring Prohibitions:

"...The inevitable rise in use that would follow legalization is a point proponents of drug prohibition often fault drug war critics for not acknowledging, though I really don't know of any critics who don't willingly concede the point.

The more appropriate response to "more users" argument is "so what?" A slight rise in the number of recreational drug users is only a problem if you believe that there's something inherently immoral and destructive about smoking a joint or snorting a line of coke--any worse, say, than downing a shot of whiskey or a taking drag off a tobacco pipe. The subset of people who refrain from drug use today out of respect for the law, but who might experiment with drugs should they one day be legal, probably isn't one we need to worry about becoming addicted in mass numbers, or committing crimes to support their habit (which probably wouldn't happen anyway if drugs were legal--how many alcoholics mug, burgle, or kill for gin money?). Unless you buy the "gateway" theory of marijuana, or the "instant addiction" theory about cocaine, both of which have zero scientific validity, I'm just not sure having slightly more overall users will have much of a negative impact on society at large.

The question, then, is what's the problem?

Many drug warriors get downright offended when you ask them that (I don't know that Goldberg would--he's historically ambivalent about the drug war). The problem for them is very simply that there will be more drug users. It's rather simple: Drug use = bad. More drug use = worse. Less drug use = success. For nearly forty years, these really been the only criteria for measuring the effectiveness of drug policy."