Alcohol Prohibition didn’t work.
Prohibition of marijuana and other drugs actually failed in much worse ways than alcohol prohibition did.
I don’t always agree with The Economist, but about this I do:
it’s time to end the failed War on Drugs and ramp down the
expensively bloated U.S. prison system.

Uncle Sam Will Enforce Prohibition,


Our September 22nd 1923 issue examined the impact of America’s
experiment with alcohol prohibition. The newspaper encourages a
similarly liberal approach to drug control today.

We wrote: “A law is not necessarily a good or wise law because
it aims at doing something which is desirable. If it is impossible
of strict administration, it will not only fail in its object, but,
what is far more serious will bring both law, legislature and
executive into open contempt.”

It has admittedly failed to stop drinking.
It has decreased the regard in which the American constitution and American
law are held abroad.
It has led withing the United States to open and widespread
contempt for and breach of law, which some critics have
even described as the “beginning of Bolshevism.”
It has proved exceedingly undemocratic, since in effect
it denies to the poor anything but the most horribly
debased and injurious forms of alcohol, but leaves more normal
alcoholic beverages obtainable by those whose purses are better filled.
It has led to a very serious outbreak of corruption, smuggling,
and profiteering.
Finally, its application to foreign ships entering American harbours has
aroused diplomatic friction, and compelled the derisive notice of other
countries to the position into which the experiment has brought the
United States.
Even after making the most generous allowance for the advantages which may have
accrued, this is a very formidable list of disadvantages,
which those who would like to impose Prohibition in the United
Kingdom would do well to study.

So by that list the War on Drugs is much worse, because it also
has produced a seven-fold increase in incarceration in the U.S. since 1980,
and far higher than in 1923.

• 1923: about 148 (sentenced adults + juvenile detention) per 100,000 people; see page 210,
  
  Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States 1850-1984, U.S. DoJ, December 1986.

• 2011: 492 sentenced per 100,000 in 2011; see Prisoners in 2011, U.S. DoJ, December 2012, which included this note:
  

  “Nearly half (48%) of inmates in federal prison
  were serving time for drug offenses in 2011”

The War on Drugs has greatly promoted militarization of police.
It has led to privatization of prisons.
And money from not just drug smugglers but also from private prison
companies and large weapons vendors has corrupted politics,
meshing with corruption fueled by the military-industrial complex.

Oh, and I don’t know of any polls on this back in 1923,
but I’d wager that Congress is much less popular now than then,
not in small part because of that corruption.
In particular, Congress is now

less popular than the Communism those Bolsheviks promoted back in 1923.
Sure, there are plenty of other reasons for Congress’ current unpopularity,
including bailing out banks but not mortgage holders or students,
and endless warmongering with no stops on domestic spying,
but the failed War on Drugs has certainly contributed to contempt for Congress.

-jsq