How is the war on drugs going, really? According to The Economist, things are not going well.

[T]he war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

How can one quantify this illiberal, murderous and pointless struggle?

The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000) . . . [F]ar from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before.

In this article, The Economist points out that it has maintained this same position for 20 years, and it is more evident than ever that the "drug war" is a disaster.