The taboo that kills

Drugs are really just agricultural products, like flour or soy.  The prohibition makes the drugs such a valuable commodity ($320bn a year).  Without prohibition, you can make about as much money on opium poppy as you can from soy beans (hint: not so much). So the war on drugs actually benefits the drug cartels - it is a necessary condition for their existence.

The losers in the war on drugs are the people whom it was meant to protect:

• At least 170,000 American lives could have been saved (according to the US government's own calculation methods) if the US government had not spent $1000bn on this "war" the past 40 years, but rather on healthcare, road safety and other protection for citizens.  Similar figures are likely for the rest of the world.
• People all over the world are terrorized by organizations financed by drug money: The Taliban, the Mexican drug cartels responsible for at least 38,000 deaths and endless troubles for their country, the dictatorship in Burma, the drug barons of Guinnea Bissau (who assasinated their head of state two years ago), the FARC guerilla in Columbia ... and the well-oiled "retail" organizations working on strategies to get your child hooked on the stuff.
• Ordinary people who are victims of crime perpetrated by drug addicts to finance their drug use, or who are scared in their cities and their homes because of such crime.
• Drug addicts who are denied a dignified life, because both their ailment (the addiction) and the way they finance it makes them criminals and outcases.  It should be possible to live a dignified life despite a drug addiction, but today it isn't.

The alternative does not need to be sudden, reckless and total legalization.  In their report, the Global Commission on Drug Policy (made up of very respectable people) suggests "experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens".  This kind of nuanced view is necessary, and it can only be brought into policy by the debate we are not having right now.