I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy. Afterward, individual mandatory punishment/rehab for those who abuse drugs/alcohol and harm themselves and others should be the norm.
That begs the question by assuming that's a good measurement. Is it? Since prohibition ended, has alcohol become so uniquely destructive here (compared to all other alcohol-allowing societies) that we've wanted to ban it again? I'm of the strong opinion that it's not.
> I think temporary society-scale prohibition when drug use becomes a widespread societal ill is good policy.
Add that to the long list of things I agree with in principle, but reject in practice. Our timeline of such experiments is a series of social disasters.
In any case, I think there a clearly distinct categories of drugs. I don't want to live around meth users, because drug itself makes them paranoid, irritable, and hard to be near. I couldn't care less if my next door neighbor smokes weed.
OK, but we passed a constitutional amendment saying the opposite, and the so-called "War on Drugs" operates in defiance of the spirit of that amendment.
Which amendment is that? The 21st repealing prohibition did not make any value statements on whether prohibition was ever good policy, it merely repeals the amendment banning alcohol.
> and the so-called "War on Drugs" operates in defiance of the spirit of that amendment.
There is no "spirit of [the] amendment". It repealed a ban on alcohol. Alcohol was undeniably an extreme social ill before prohibition.