The “War on Drugs” has been a catastrophic failure no matter how you measure it, from the lives taken or destroyed in its wake to the criminal and terrorist organizations that have only been enriched by drug prohibition.

Nearly a century ago, the United States passed the 18th Amendment, barring the sale of alcoholic products, also known as Prohibition. A mere 13 years later, it was repealed by the 21st Amendment, and the matter of alcohol prohibition was rendered to the historical dustbin, forever to be a curious anomaly in high school history textbooks.

Why then has America failed to learn the same lesson when it comes to other intoxicating substances?

One of the very first lessons of Prohibition is that it failed utterly to achieve its stated end of curbing alcohol consumption. More so, instead of stopping the sale of alcohol, it simply drove such sales underground, with the distribution being controlled by less than savory characters, which brings us to the second lesson: Prohibition served only to enrich gangsters and scofflaws.

Indeed, it was the bootlegging racket that enabled common thugs like Al Capone to become powerful criminal overlords.

Today the drug trade serves to enrich every form of street gang and terrorist organization imaginable, from Marxist guerrillas in Columbia to even the ousted Taliban government, who received billions in payments from our own government shortly before the Sept. 11 tragedies for their cooperation in helping stamp out poppy production (which is now in full bloom again).

There is in fact a kernel of truth to the government line, “When you buy drugs, you’re helping to support terrorists.” The omitted premise of course is that by banning drugs to begin with, the government in effect puts an exorbitant risk premium on such substances, with some estimates of the street price of marijuana alone being inflated up to 13,000 percent due to drug prohibition.

Such a premium goes straight into the pockets of thugs who use such profits to terrorize innocent people through gang wars or outright acts of terrorism.

Yet one will quickly notice that the comparable premium on alcohol these days certainly isn’t enough to attract criminal and terrorist enterprises — without prohibition, there exists no risk premium, undercutting their ability to make exorbitant and illicit profits.

Some proponents of the status quo would argue that giving up the drug war would in effect be giving in to criminals and junkies, if not outright condoning their actions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly today one can point to the harms that have been brought about by pathological behaviors such as smoking and alcohol abuse, but if Prohibition has taught us anything, it is that banning illicit substances only serves to empower criminals — regulating what individuals do with their own bodies through paternalistic laws is a proven failure.

Instead we must treat others as adults and hold them strictly accountable for the consequences of their actions when such choices bring harm to others.

If we realized this with alcohol 70 years ago, isn’t it time we realized the same with other substances?

— Steve Skutnik is a member of the Iowa State Libertarians.