As an official of the then UN International Drug Control Program in Pakistan, I was a paid-up drug warrior. I came to see that my work was not merely ineffective: it was counter-productive, drawing attention to strategies which did not work and taking it from consideration of drug law reform. The war on drugs spreads corruption not only in societies of the broadly prosperous West but also in more fragile poor countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where opium poppy cultivation and guns form a potent combination. Let's move to evidence-based policies. I published a couple of articles along these lines, "Squeezing the Balloon" and "Troublesome Boomerang".

An elderly couple whom I know had their home invaded and searched by police because the infra-red light patterns of their house seemed from a police-helicopter's vantage similar to those of a hydroponic marijuana-plantation.

My taxes paid to keep that helicopter in the air, burning fuel; my taxes paid handsomely for poor-scientists and engineers experimenting with their infra-red devices, who instead of doing their calculations properly and meticulously, used real people as their laboratory-animals; and my taxes paid for policemen to break in and traumatise an elderly couple. My taxes also pay for feeding a large number of prisoners convicted for drug offences and their warders.

Speaking of prisoners, did you know that because of the drug issue, Australian prisoners, including those who were never involved with drugs, are not allowed to bring into prison any personal items? No books (including for educational correspondence courses), clothes, musical instruments, food (from visitors), small sentimental items of memory, not even their own tooth-brush. Such cruelty for what?

Drugs are bad - the war on drugs is much worse!

what fuels the outlaw gangs well. I used to deal for some of them and what was fueling them was the police force. Recycling the proceeds from drug lab raids. Police Psudo watch was designed to deliver a monopoly control of amphetamine distribution to the police ,who could obtain it from confiscated shipments on the docks and turn a blind eye on their triad partners imports FOR A FEE.

I don't believe that we had a serious drug problem until we blindly followed the US into "The War on Drugs". After all, drugs have been around for millennia. As with Prohibition, this war was probably initiated by religious bigots wishing to impose their own morals on the rest of us.
Read "High Society" by Ben Elton for a brilliant insight into the damaging effects of this war on British society; of the damage done to the wider society as well as those directly involved, such as the users, the police, and the legal system as a whole. These costs are enormous, and I am sure that if the general public were better educated about this, all drugs would be legalized.
Do we have international agreements that would prohibit us from "going it alone", instead of blindly following the US in such a stupid way?