>>nor should surveillance stings be set up to entrap people.

You used the word "entrap". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Setting up surveillance of people doing what they independently decide to do on their own, is not entrapment.

Entrapment is when you interact with a target and actively convince them and/or enable them to do a criminal act that they (arguably) would not have done on their own without your prompting/enabling actions.

That's exactly where my mind went as I read the article.

All of this money and effort just to continue to prosecute a meaningless and harmful "drug war."

At this point, countries are literally spending money to prevent themselves from making money (by setting up legal markets and tax structures).

It's all so absolutely and miserably asinine.

The war on drugs and surveillance overreach is a total disaster, but that's completely irrelevant to whether harmful drugs should be regulated at all. Fail to adequately regulate drug distribution, and you'll end up with another opioid epidemic.

I find myself asking this question, what causes more net harm, the social impact of people abusing cocaine and associated problems or the damage caused by cocaine being high lucrative while illegal and the war on drugs.

It really doesnt take much to figure out the answer.