At last the commentators are largely agreed that the war on drugs is unwinable. Bloomberg have an interesting debate currently. We will have to wait for the politicians to catch up. Prohibition didn't work in the 1920s for alchohol and wont work today against illegal drugs. So let the suckers that do drugs and buy them over the counter. One has to be pragmatic about this problem even though one strongly disaproves. We learnt to live with alchohol and we can live with drugs too
Over the years I've read at least a half dozen books on the subject (undercover ops, stings, etc, here and abroad) the re-occuring message is we never finish the job. No explanations. Assignment over, people transferred, go with what we got, the end. The war on drugs is busy work. Probably most of our "Wars" are busy work.
I recall a recent story that suggested it would cost half as much to purchase all of the opium from the middle east. Will post if I run across it again. I'm sure this would come with it's own set of problems. However I thought it was an interesting notion...