It is true that drug abuse is harmful to health and the social environment. It has also been shown that the current laws against the consumption, carrying, distribution and production of drugs have not been as effective as expected.
Since 1981, the United States has been spending $150 billion a year from taxes to try to prevent Colombian Cocaine, Burmese heroin and Jamaican marijuana from entering its borders. However, the evidence is that for every tonne confiscated, hundreds more go in.
This so-called "War on Drugs" instead of employing a strategy containing preventive, investigative, educational and social programmes designed to address such problems as permanent poverty, long-term unemployment and deteriorating living conditions, continues to waste billions of taxpayers' dollars on military equipment dedicated to ineffectively combating drugs, sending thousands of citizens to prison for carrying small quantities of these substances, while the real drug lords' or capos' continue to get rich through this monopoly generated by the laws.
In addition to the public health problem, drug prohibition laws promise a healthy society by denying citizens access to and possible addiction to narcotics. But this has been nothing more than a false reality, since as I said before, drugs continue to circulate on the streets and are not subject to any quality control, being often contaminated or extremely potent, causing illness and sometimes death to those who use them.
It has also generated a bloody business, as drug deals are often surrounded by violence, which has taken the lives of many innocent people.
Drug prohibition laws have failed to cut or reduce the harmful effects of drug use. The slogan of "A drug-free world" is an unrealistic concept, prohibition has only led to criminals gaining more power.