It's helping law enforcement maintain high budgets.
The drug war fuels the violence of the drug trade and that violence requires the police be well equipped to handle it.
And not just in the obvious, direct ways of pointing out drug crime and asking for funding. E.g., I recall studies of DARE’s impacts showing that it had no measurable impacts on drug use, drug abuse, or drug-related crime among students directly participating or communities, but did have a measurable positive impact on participating students attitudes toward law enforcement.
Our government hasn't listened to us for decades: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem
They're been no sign of that changing since I've been alive.
That would free up over 80% of the DEA's budget to go after meth and heroin.