The war on drugs is one of the worst policies America has ever produced. It has put two million black men in jail—the worst incarceration of blacks in human history. California is spending more on new prisons than higher education, and it’s all being driven by the war on drugs. We’ve got the whole thing dead wrong. It hasn’t worked; it isn’t working; it will never work. Well, actually, we could make it work, the way the Malaysians make it work: execute anybody involved with drugs. But we’re not about to make possession of a joint a capital crime. So we export our problem. We exported it to Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, and now we’re exporting it to Mexico, and that’s wrong, immoral—and ineffective. If we can’t educate our kids not to use drugs, then it’s our fault.
