"War on Drugs" Turns 40

In 1971, President Richard Nixon named drug abuse as "public enemy number one in the United States," and officially declared a "war on drugs".

But the long federal experiment in prohibition of drugs has given us crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children. Today, the Cato Institute would like to reiterate that drug abuse is better dealt with as a moral and medical problem, and once again recommend that Congress repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, shut down the Drug Enforcement Administration, and let the states set their own policies with regard to currently illegal drugs.

"War on Drugs" Turns 40 -

• "40 Years of Drug Prohibition," by Tim Lynch
• "Resolved: America Should Legalize Drugs," Cato Event
• "The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition," by Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock
• "The War on Drugs," Cato Handbook for Policymakers
• More Cato research on the Drug War

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