>(Not a libertarian) I get the sentiment, but it's been shown that the war on drugs approach is expensive and ineffective. Is there really a way to show that i

>(Not a libertarian) I get the sentiment, but it's been shown that the war on drugs approach is expensive and ineffective. Is there really a way to show that if the war on drugs never existed, the same number of drug users would exist, thus making the war ineffective? I'm not sure how one would prove this. It seems possible that without the war on drugs, the impact of drugs could be even greater, but again, hard to prove that. Just an anecdote but in high school my entire reason for not smoking weed was because it was illegal, even though one of my friend groups was really into it.