>Its purpose it to line the pockets of the politicians who support it. I would say that it's more for the large pharmaceutical companies. Politicians are cheap these days, and the profits from the "war on drugs" are orders of magnitude larger than the money given to politicians to support it. The ATT/T-Mo merger "only" had $9 million in lobbying support -- an order of magnitude less than they stand/stood to lose if the deal fell through REF: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/12/09/attmay.have.tr... .
Both local law enforcement and the for-profit companies behind our jails profit enormously from the US having the highest percentage of population incarcerated of any first world country. The majority of individuals currently doing time are in for drug-related crimes.
We have the highest incarceration rate, full stop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...
For-profit prisons, however, are the most direct beneficiaries of the (completely fucking insane) "war on drugs". For-profit prisons are one of the best examples of how an otherwise fairly functional democratic society can end up with a system of profoundly deranged incentives that visits grievous harm upon a staggering number of people.
These institutions conduct a program of systematic, industrialized dehumanization of millions of people -- including millions of people who have never harmed another person. In my view, this makes them evil, profoundly evil.
Although this sounds extreme to some people (especially those who have never paused to think it through), I put America's industrial prisons in the same league with the Nazi extermination camps. America doesn't actually starve people to death or gas them in ovens, but that's a matter of degrees. America does separate children from parents and force nonviolent human beings to live out their lives as caged animals. Millions and millions and millions of them.
There is not much about America so disgusting and disgraceful.
That is not true.
> In fact, in many cases, they're essentially interchangeable from a chemical perspective
This is true.
In a sane society, both would be true. But they are not. The "war on drugs" is not an innocent mistake. It is calculated and it is doing precisely what it was designed to do.
Its purpose it to line the pockets of the politicians who support it.
By prosecuting drug dealers and users, you bring the cost of using illegals drugs up. Significantly. In other words, you make illegal drugs less competitive vs legal drugs. This allows the pharmaceutical companies to maintain or increase prices for legal drugs. The additional funds the pharmaceutical companies get, they do not get to keep. They funnel that into the regulatory apparatus and more importantly, into the campaigns of the very politicians who support the system.