This is a thread about the "War on Drugs." I answer the following question: are government bureaucrats historically incompetent at achieving their goals, or are they pursuing goals that are different from what they tell us publicly?

After over 40 years, the drug war has:
-cost more than a trillion dollars
-caused over 50 million people to be caged, including over 20 million for marijuana possession
-caused an estimated hundreds of millions of police stopping people.

-caused tens of millions of years in prison
-separated tens of millions of children from their parents
-cost tens of millions of people their education, homes, and ability to make a living
-caused millions of square acres of pristine land to be spray-poisoned

-cost tens of millions of people their right to vote
- killed hundreds of thousands in the militarized drug wars and U.S. intervention in Latin America
-led to militarization and widespread surveillance by local police of every U.S. city and town.

The vast majority of these horrific consequences were inflicted on people for personal use of certain substances, an exercise of bodily autonomy that other countries have protected and that this country protects for harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco.

All of this was done in ways that dramatically increased the racial disparities in every stage of the criminal system, and almost all of it targeted the poorest people in our society.

For all of these social costs, drug use either did not go down or significantly increased during the "War on Drugs," and teenagers are using dangerous drugs at twice the rate that they did in the 1980s. The rate of overdose deaths has more than tripled in 20 years.

Government bureaucrats know all of these statistics, and yet the "War on Drugs" continues. Only idiots would pursue strategies that are so counterproductive and destructive for so long—and our legal system’s bureaucrats are sophisticated, not idiotic.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the “War on Drugs” is not about flourishing communities and ending drug use. It's about profit, racism, surveillance, and social control.