August 31, 2007 1:45PM # America’s Longest War By [Gene Healy](https://www.cato.org/people/gene-healy) --- SHARE In the current issue of *Foreign Policy* magazine, Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance, has a brisk, powerfully written piece calling for the legalization of drugs. Unfortunately, it’s [subscriber-only](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=3932&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3932), but here’s one of the more provocative passages: > Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid-era South Africa for how to deal with race. The United States ranks first in the world in per-capita incarceration–with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The number of people locked up for U.S. drug-law violations has increased from roughly 50,000 in 1980 to almost 500,000 today.… In 2005, the ayatollah in charge of Iran’s Ministry of Justice issued a *fatwa* declaring methadone maintainance and syringe-exchange programs compatible with *sharia* law. One only wishes his American counterpart were comparably enlightened. A few weeks ago, the *Washington Post’s* Outlook section featured an indictment of drug prohibition written by Misha Glenny: [“The Lost War.” ](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701716.html) Glenny concludes with the following: > In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue since its inauguration. It’s obvious why — telling people that their kids can do drugs is the kiss of death at the ballot box. But that was before 9/11. Now the drug war is undermining Western security throughout the world. In one particularly revealing conversation, a senior official at the British Foreign Office told me, “I often think we will look back at the War on Drugs in a hundred years’ time and tell the tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ This is so stupid.” > > > How right he is. For some of Cato’s 30 years of work on this issue, start [here](https://www.cato.org/research/criminal-justice/drug-war.html). Bonus Friday Fun Link: go to page 4 of [this document ](http://www.csdp.org/research/shafernixon.pdf)\[.pdf\] to read about how Richard Nixon’s Archie-Bunker-style social theories led him to ramp up the war on marijuana. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).