Time to end the war on drugs

This produces 2 less that awesome situations:

It is because of the prohibition called "The War on Drugs" that a real war fueled by drug money is out of control.

Because of the over use of the word, it's now harder to distinguish between what is a war and what is not a war.

TLDR: You can't have a war on a concept. It logically and literally makes no sense.

No it is not. Two examples of this are Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

In both these countries there are zero tolerance for drug users and drug traffickers and the results show. Smoking Marijuana almost teenagers in Japan is basically unheard of.

It seems that laws in the USA and Europe are not strict enough to act as a deterrence. If many of these countries adopted the death penalty or similar penalties for trafficking, then perhaps something could be done about it.

(Singapore executes drug traffickers. I don't know what legal punishments there are for traffickers in Japan, but I know the social punishments are severe. A family will often cut contact with a relative if he is sentenced for a minor crime. Sports stars, tenured professors and celebrities will loose their jobs if they had a criminal offence even for something completely unrelated to their career. Quite different from the attention that washed out American celebrities get.)

It's really interesting to me in what way his statement is actually true, as you say, just not in the way that it is sold (he is right on that part - declaring "war" on anything from Iraq to Christmas is in itself an issue that can create dangerous narratives). As you've said, the way it is conducted in the US, it certainly does involve large numbers of deaths - if the drug-related deaths (due to criminalization) within the US don't convince you, the Mexican border or even further south paint a clear picture. Furthermore, the only option that is offered is indeed total surrender - the stated goal of The War On Drugs being to end illegal drug trade, preferably to end illegal drug use, completely.

The problem, via Wikipedia, is: >>ONDCP's view is that "drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated... making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe."(2011)Illegal drugs equal addiction equal disease. Increasing availability increases addiction, reducing safety (think of the children!), meaning the only option is criminalizing any sort of availability. If that is the narrative you are selling, you have indeed polarized the debate enough to warrant a war. The problem is that it really just isn't true. The US has created this war - it is a fight they picked.

Today, the economics of prohibition have tipped off the scale and laid power in the hands of people that really shouldn't have any. The reality of criminalization has simply created a large number of criminals (rocketing the percentage of US citizens in prison from 0.2 to 0.8), it has not served to scare people from using drugs, it has actually been an example of the same-old "hide it, to make it more interesting".

But again, the real issue is that the War On Drugs completely misunderstands the actual reality: Drug addicts are people primarily having a problem, not causing problems. Drug Users can range from people enjoying a glass of wine to the Hollywood "crack house zombies". That is a sliding scale of regular folks to folks with some military grade issues. Rubber-stamping the majority of them as criminals is simple, costly and foolish. What they don't get is that you shouldn't punish people for having a problem. You should help them. That is what Portugal got right.

The problem is understood backwards and then it is "solved" backwards again. That such a thing can happen in a country that already got a pretty definitive statement on the counter-productivity of prohibition is incredibly ironic.