The War on Drugs Was Never About Drugs — It Was About Control

The war on drugs is not a failure. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do: control people, criminalize dissent, protect profits, and dress all of it up as “public health” and “public safety.” Calling it a failure implies good intentions gone wrong. The record is a lot uglier than that.

If you’re an adult who believes your body is yours, the drug war is not just bad policy. It’s a direct attack on your basic autonomy. It cages people, militarizes streets, fattens corporate balance sheets, and then has the nerve to blame “addicts” for the damage.

The War on Drugs: A Policy Built on Lies

The modern drug war didn’t start with some noble concern for public health. It started with racism, politics, and fear-mongering. And U.S. policymakers have been hilariously open about it when they thought no one was listening.

John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide, spelled it out in a 1994 interview that should be engraved on every courthouse wall:

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin… and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”

Arrests, raids, smear campaigns, nightly news hysteria — that was the point. It was never about “saving people from drugs.” It was about criminalizing groups that threatened power. Drugs were just the excuse.

Fast forward 50 years and the script hasn’t changed much. New enemies, same playbook: blame the substance, never the system.

Prohibition Doesn’t Stop Use — It Just Makes It More Dangerous

If prohibition actually worked, we’d see less use, fewer deaths, less harm. Instead, we see the opposite. Over and over. Country after country. Decade after decade.

Example 1: The Overdose Crisis in the Age of Mass Prohibition

Take North America’s overdose catastrophe. The United States hit over 100,000 overdose deaths in a single year recently — the highest in its history. Canada’s not far behind on a per-capita basis. Both are textbook prohibition states: heavy policing, criminal penalties, synthetic drug scares, and political chest-beating about “tough on crime.”

And what’s killing people? Not the concept of “drugs.” Not some inherent evil in getting high. It’s a toxic, profit-driven, unregulated street supply created by prohibition.

Fentanyl didn’t magically appear because people suddenly decided they wanted something more deadly. It appeared because prohibition makes smaller, more potent substances cheaper and easier to smuggle and sell. Scarcity plus risk plus profit motive equals stronger, more compact products. That’s not a moral story; that’s a supply chain story.

Think about it this way: Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s didn’t get people to stop drinking. It pushed them to drink moonshine and mystery bathtub blends. People were poisoned, blinded, and killed. Once prohibition ended and alcohol became regulated, guess what disappeared? Not alcohol. The poisoned mystery supply.

We’re repeating the same mistake, but with opioids, stimulants, and synthetic drugs — except this time, we pretend it’s a public health strategy.

Example 2: Portugal Proved Everyone Wrong — 20 Years Ago

Portugal decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001. Not just cannabis — heroin, cocaine, MDMA, all of it. People caught with small amounts are referred to a health and social services panel, not cops and courts.

The result?

• Overdose deaths dropped dramatically and stayed far below EU average for years.
• HIV transmission via injection plummeted.
• Use did not explode into some apocalyptic free-for-all.

It wasn’t perfect, and recent austerity and policy shifts have stressed the system. But for two decades, Portugal has been living, stubborn evidence that a non-punitive, health-based model massively reduces harm. Meanwhile, countries clinging to prohibition drown in body bags and call it “unintended consequences.”

You can’t say “we don’t know what would happen if we ended prohibition” with a straight face anymore. We do know. We’ve seen it. Politicians just don’t like the answer, because it means giving up control and admitting they’ve been complicit in killing people.

Criminalization Is State Violence Disguised as Concern

Let’s stop pretending that arresting, caging, evicting, firing, and stigmatizing people is “help.” It’s punishment. It’s violence.

When a government criminalizes substances, it’s not just punishing a molecule. It’s punishing choices: how you relax, cope, celebrate, medicate, explore your own consciousness. It’s saying: your body, your mind, your pleasure — these are state property, to be regulated, policed, and if needed, destroyed.

And who gets hit hardest? The same people every time: poor communities, racialized communities, people with mental health issues, queer and trans people, unhoused people — anyone already deemed disposable by the system.

In the U.S., Black people are about 3–4 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than white people, despite similar usage rates. This isn’t a glitch. It’s the design. The war on drugs is a convenient way to keep certain populations under surveillance, in cages, and out of political and economic power.

The Grand Hypocrisy: Who’s Allowed to Drug You

Governments love to claim they’re protecting us from dangerous drugs, but they have zero problem when those drugs come with a logo and a lobbyist.

Corporate Drug Dealers, State Approved

Opioid overdose waves didn’t start on the corner. They started in boardrooms. Purdue Pharma and friends aggressively marketed OxyContin and other opioids, downplayed addiction risks, and pushed doctors to overprescribe. Regulators nodded along or looked away. Profits soared. Addiction and overdoses skyrocketed.

When the crisis became too obvious to ignore, the response was to clamp down on prescriptions — and drive dependent people into the illegal, contaminated supply. That’s how many people ended up with street fentanyl in the first place: prohibition at the street level, deregulation at the corporate level. Bad combo.

Let’s be clear: If an individual sells a bag of dope to survive, they risk decades in prison. If a corporation slings billions of dollars’ worth of addictive drugs and lies about their risks? They pay a fine that’s a rounding error on their profits. Maybe someone writes a strongly worded op-ed. No one’s getting no-knock-raided at 4 a.m. in a suit.

Alcohol and Tobacco: The Officially Approved Poisons

Alcohol and tobacco kill far more people worldwide than all illegal drugs combined. Yet they’re legal, advertised, normalized — and massively profitable. Entire tax systems are built on their sale.

Why are they legal while other substances aren’t? Not because of relative harm. Not because of evidence. They’re legal because they were already widely used by politically powerful groups when drug control laws were written.

So spare us the moral panic. The line between “illegal drug” and “respectable substance” is about history, culture, racism, and money — not chemistry or safety.

What Real Harm Reduction Looks Like

If we actually cared about reducing harm instead of punishing people, we’d build systems around reality: adults use drugs, always have, always will. Some use them recreationally, some therapeutically, some chaotically. The question isn’t “how do we stop this?” It’s “how do we make it safer?”

1. Decriminalize Personal Use and Possession

Nobody should be in a cage for what they put in their own body. Full stop.

Decriminalization doesn’t mean “anything goes” or “no rules.” It means removing criminal penalties for personal use and possession, and shifting resources from cops and courts to evidence-based services: housing, mental health, voluntary treatment, supervised consumption, drug checking, employment support.

Portugal showed that decriminalization can cut health harms and reduce the burden on the justice system. Many jurisdictions that have flirted with partial decriminalization — like Oregon — have run into issues not because the concept is flawed, but because politicians refuse to fund the health and social services that are supposed to replace police and prisons.

2. Legalize and Regulate: Bring the Supply Out of the Shadows

Decriminalization deals with users. Legalization and regulation deal with the market. That’s where you stop poison from hitting people in the first place.

Legal, regulated supply means:

• Known doses and contents instead of mystery powder.
• Age restrictions instead of “whoever has cash.”
• Quality control instead of whatever the cartel cut it with.
• Tax revenue for services instead of profit for unregulated suppliers.

We already know how this works; we do it for alcohol, cannabis in many places, and prescription drugs (often badly, but at least they’re labeled). Supervised injectable opioid programs and “safe supply” pilots in places like Canada and parts of Europe show: when people have access to a known, legal, clean drug supply, overdose deaths plummet, and chaos declines.

But instead of scaling that up, governments are busy raiding compassion clubs and shutting down innovative harm reduction projects because they threaten the moral theater of prohibition.

3. Fund Harm Reduction Like We Fund Police

Politicians love to say “we support harm reduction” and then toss peanuts at it while pumping billions into policing and prisons.

Real harm reduction means:

• Widespread access to naloxone, no questions asked.
• Supervised consumption sites in every city, not a token few.
• Free, anonymous drug checking for anyone who wants it.
• Low-barrier, voluntary treatment options — not court-mandated punishment dressed up as “rehab.”

We could build all of that for a fraction of what we currently spend on enforcement, incarceration, and militarized nonsense. The barrier isn’t cost. It’s political will — and the addiction to punishment.

Bodily Autonomy Is Not Negotiable

This isn’t just a debate about “drug policy.” It’s about what kind of society we’re willing to live in.

If the state claims the right to dictate what you can put into your own body — even in private, even as a consenting adult — then your body is not really yours. You’re on a kind of conditional lease, revocable if your behavior offends the current moral majority or threatens certain economic interests.

We recognize bodily autonomy in other areas, at least in theory: sex between consenting adults, reproductive rights (though always under attack), the right to refuse medical treatment. Yet somehow, swallowing a pill, taking a line, smoking a joint, eating a mushroom, injecting a substance — that’s where the state suddenly becomes your moral guardian.

Newsflash: Adults do not need permission to alter their own consciousness.

“But What About the Harms?”

Let’s address the predictable panic points.

Yes, drugs can be harmful. So can alcohol, cars, processed sugar, gambling, extreme sports, and having a cellphone glued to your face 12 hours a day. The answer is not prohibition; it’s regulation, education, and support.

No, legalization doesn’t mean a lawless free-for-all. It means we shift from criminal law to regulatory law. You can regulate production, packaging, potency, marketing, and sale without criminalizing the end user. We manage to do this with alcohol. When was the last time someone was arrested for having a beer in their kitchen?

Yes, some people struggle with dependency. And right now, we punish them for it, then act surprised when nothing gets better. Under prohibition, people with the highest needs take the biggest risks, with the dirtiest supply, under the harshest surveillance. A sane system would offer them stability, safe supply, housing, community, and choices.

Ending Prohibition Is Not Radical — Keeping It Is

The truly radical position is the status quo: maintaining a century-old experiment that has:

• Failed to eliminate drugs.
• Fueled mass incarceration.
• Supercharged organized crime.
• Driven overdose deaths to record highs.
• Entrenched racism and class oppression.
• Wasted trillions of dollars globally.

That’s not “caution.” That’s ideological extremism backed by state violence.

Ending prohibition — fully decriminalizing use and possession, legally regulating supply, and funding real harm reduction — is not some wild utopian fantasy. It’s the boring, evidence-based, grown-up response to a century of obvious failure and institutional lies.

If You Believe Adults Own Their Bodies, There’s Only One Side

This comes down to a basic question: Who owns your body?

If the answer is “I do,” then prohibition is indefensible. You cannot simultaneously claim bodily autonomy and support a system that criminalizes people for what they voluntarily ingest.

If the answer is “the state, when it feels like it,” then be honest about that. Stop pretending this is about health. Call it what it is: social control, moral policing, and economic protectionism for the industries and institutions that profit from the status quo.

The war on drugs was never about drugs. It was — and is — about power. Ending prohibition is not just good drug policy; it’s a non-negotiable step toward a society where adults are trusted with their own lives, and where “harm reduction” means reducing harm — not maximizing punishment.

We don’t need another commission, another blue-ribbon panel, another “national conversation.” We need to end the charade. Decriminalize. Legalize. Regulate. Fund harm reduction. And finally admit: the real danger was never the drugs. It was the people who thought they had the right to control everyone who uses them.

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Tags: drug policy, harm reduction, legalization, antiprohibit, opinion