Enforcement

Some good observations here on the war on drugs, to wit, the DEA claiming success because it’s changed the rules by which success is measured.

At one point, the DEA’s goal was to reduce drug usage by making drugs expensive, thus cutting demand. But despite massive increases in the DEA budget over the last couple of decades, street prices of heroin and cocaine (adjusted for purity and inflation) are down 80%.

So the DEA simply claims that it’s being successful because it’s arresting lots of drug pushers.

But drug policy isn’t about arresting pushers, it’s about reducing usage. If that’s not happening, then the policy is a failure.