> And you can't blame addiction problems on the drug war, there would be just as many addicts if not more without it. You can't blame addiction problems on the

> And you can't blame addiction problems on the drug war, there would be just as many addicts if not more without it. You can't blame addiction problems on the drug war any more than you can prevent them with a drug war. They're inevitable. But you can treat them as what they truly are, medical problems, rather than criminal acts. You need look no further than the two major legal drugs in our society to see how how few people are stealing or committing acts of violence to support their alcohol or tobacco addictions. But if you rewind 90ish years, you'll see the same violence you see now with illegal drugs surrounding the then-illegal alcohol. We can thank congress for giving us the 18th and 21st amendments because that period showed us the difference between a legal, regulated market for drugs and a black market. People are going to use drugs whether they're illegal or not. And that means other people will sell them those drugs, no matter what laws we put in place. Faced with that eventuality, we need to structure society to minimize the damage that's caused by this. Criminalizing substances manifestly does not meet this goal. It's asinine to suggest that it hasn't multiplied our prison population many times over.