Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs in 1971. At the time he called drugs America’s “public enemy No. 1,” although he knew that wasn’t true. The entire venture was the worst kind of political ploy – aimed primarily at Black Americans – and continues to exist for no other reason than that few have had the courage to undertake a genuine cost-benefit analysis. We’ve spent a trillion dollars on the Drug War over the years and clearly it hasn’t solved a problem; if anything, it has exacerbated it greatly.

Gabor Mate has remarked that “It isn’t a war on drugs, but a war on drug addicts.” The War on Drugs has caused more suffering than it has abated; among other things, it is one of the main drivers of the prison-industrial complex. When I was in college there were 300,000 people incarcerated in the U.S.; today, there are over 2.3 million. And almost half of all federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders.

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It is time to end America’s War on Drugs, to radically reassess the problem and initiate a season of solutions. Most addicts would prefer to be sober than to be desperately addicted. For the $100B we spend on the Drug War each year, instead we could fund a world class network of drug recovery options. As President I wouldn’t want a Drug Czar; I’d want a Recovery Czar. Ending the War on Drugs will also help undercut the power of the drug cartels by taking away their black market. And it would give us more bandwidth and resources with which to go after the drug we do need to stop – fentanyl.

Major issues such as harm reduction must be addressed strategically should we take the path to drug decriminalization. Read more about my Drug Policy here.