I'm curious if there are any other analogies in history of societal problems that was so widely misunderstood yet spent ungodly amounts of human time, money, and jail time was spent trying to stop in all the wrong ways.
The war on drugs really are the crowning achievement of anti-scientific public policy. Decades of ignoring the results and continuing to try the same thing.
The west isn't the only one with this problem. The DEA has been exporting this failed strategy to other countries for decades. The Philippines has taken the American style war to the extreme: http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-philippines-war-on-drugs-deal...
They've demonstrated that the only way to actually win it like a war is via death squads and the total destruction of human rights. Otherwise governments have to face reality and accept it doesn't work.