There are some good points above. But a major difference will be the desire to win the war. As a nation, we want drugs. But we don't want terrorism. So without draconian laws, there will be a market for drugs here.


We don't really want to win the "war on drugs." And that is OK, because to win it, we would have to do totally abhorrent things. Right now, we are willing to incarcerate people for long stretches and pay a lot of money to do it. But we are not willing to do what other places have done to actually win the "war." If we publically executed 12 year olds for smoking 1 joint, like Singapore does, I bet we would see less drug use. Seeing a few classmates executed in the schoolyard or public square would have a chilling effect on children who would use drugs. When we executed parents and left some orphans, those kids would probably not rush right out to buy drugs. But we will not do this of course. Nor should we. We are seeing the first signs of mainstream politicians questioning our drug policy. This will continue.


We may find at some point that winning the war on terrorism will require us to do horrible things. At that point we will have to decide. But we have barely started on the path where we will have to make that decision, so we'll see.