In the early years of Richard Nixon’s presidency, a few starry-eyed libertarian policy makers took a look at America’s illicit drug use. They came up with some fresh and distinctly American solutions, including completely decriminalizing marijuana and buying up the world’s opium crop directly from the growers to stop heroin production. Solid work, sensible if ambitious plans, all focused on taking away drug profit from criminal enterprise.

But Nixon saw things differently. He correctly judged Middle America’s apprehensiveness as a political opportunity and amplified the myth of counterculture hippies as drug-crazed libertine maniacs dedicated to corrupting innocent children of the decent and the God-fearing. Nixon termed illicit narcotics “public enemy number one in the United States,” introduced legislation increasing drug conviction penalties and boosted drug law enforcement budgets. By 1973 he had created the Drug Enforcement Agency and The Stupid War was begun.

Ben Wallace-Wells has written a spectacular, comprehensive article for Rolling Stone called “How America Lost the War on Drugs.” He is thorough (15,000 words), cautious, direct and honest, and he put his piece together the old-fashioned way from public documents, brainpower and common sense.

“All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana - and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes.”

Six Presidents, 35 years, half a trillion dollars and nothing to show for it; nothing gained at all.

The Stupid War.