I read that when the infamous gangland killings occurred, many who felt prohibition was not working became sure it was not working and the cost in the crime of supplying illegal alcohol was much worse than cost of its legal use and adverse affect on society. The brutality of the story marked prohibition’s death knell. I keep waiting for such an event and story in the war on illegal drugs.

Other stories on the drug war I would like to see:

1. Prohibition caused big city gangs to become organized crime and the current war on drugs is providing re-financing, and just as we have had to pay the price for organized crime ever since, we will have to pay a lot more in the future because of the money they are making off the drug trade.

1. An emphases on the correlation of expenditures by the government on interdiction, the resulting street price for drugs, and the increase cost of burglaries and robberies to finance the increase cost of drugs. All government interdiction does is raise the price and increase crimes against people and property to finance the increase cost of drugs.

2. Even if all the coca, opium, and marijuana plants were driven to extinction, a whole host of possible synthetic substitutes are waiting in the wings for the price to rise to the level for them to be brought onto the world stage -- and they would be much harder to counteract than something that is grown out in an open field, processed, and smuggled into the U.S. Also, attempting to synthesize a natural substance may lead to unforeseen developments that may results in an even worse drug dependences and actions to maintain that new drug habit.

Something even worse sounding than meth-mouth.