Hodding Carter III, in "We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works," presents a compelling, well-reasoned, and finally convincing argument that the war on drugs is a failure and should be replaced with a policy which legalizes drugs.
Carter argues that one of the most destructive effects of the illegality of drugs and its accompanying war on drugs is the corruption of law enforcement officials. He compares the corruption of police in the days of Prohibition to the corruption today created by the war on illegal drugs:
Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs, and sheriffs across the state. But . . . Prohibition-era corruption . . . was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the United States today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, . . . sheriffs, other policemen, and now judges are being bought up by the gross (9).
Worse, drug money "is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments" (9).
Whatever one's objections to the legalization of drugs and the end of the war on drugs, it is utterly undeniable that such a radical change in policy would instantly abolish this corruption of the law enforcement agencies in this nation. Legalization would put the criminals instantly out of business from the top drug kingpins in other countries to the lowliest dealer in the streets of the nation's big cities and smallest towns. Police, judges and other officials would not be vulnerable to corruption because corruption is rooted in the illegality of drugs and the attendant high cost of those drugs. Regulating drug production and sales would give the government control of the situation, would instantly lower prices to a level with which criminal drug-makers could not and would not compete, and corruption of officials w...