A Futile War on Drugs Wastes Money and Wrecks Lives

The war on drugs has been a US$ 1 trillion failure. For more than four decades, governments around the world have pumped huge sums of money into ineffective and repressive anti-drug efforts. These have come at the expense of programs that actually work, such as needle exchanges and substitution therapy. This is not just a waste of money, it is counterproductive.