Prohibition on drugs failure like on alcohol. No duh!

Here's a guy with guts. Mr. James P. Gray writes in the National Poost today:

Based on my experience as a federal prosecutor with the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, as a criminal defence attorney for the U.S. Navy JAG Corps, and as a trial judge in Orange County, Calif. since 1983, I've concluded that the U.S. government policy of drug prohibition has not only failed, but that it is hopeless.

The problem is not that our law enforcement officers aren't doing a good job. In truth is they have a dangerous and difficult task, and are doing better than we have a right to expect. They are no more to blame for the failure of drug prohibition than was Elliott Ness for the failure of alcohol prohibition. The problem, rather, is that our prohibitionist laws make the trafficking in illegal drugs so obscenely profitable that we will never exhaust the supply to criminals willing to take the risk of imprisonment in order to produce and sell them.

Why does Mr. Gray have guts?  Because most politicians on the Left AND the Right in pretty much every country in the civilised world do not want to hear this particular bit of truth.  They would like to keep on with the make-believe that they have the power to control the importation and sale of drugs.  Or guns, for that matter.  They don't, and they know that they don't, but they just can't let go of the pretense.  Mr. Gray is in for a most unpleasant time for speaking this truth to power, as the Left likes to say.

What to do instead?  Legalize it and tax the crap out of it, obviously.  Make it boring and mucho uncool wouldn't hurt either.

The Phantom