The public will only engage and end the War on (people with) Drugs when they realize how much money is being diverted away from things like social services, education(!), enforcement of malum in se laws, and many other under-funded expenditures that benefit society in general instead of just a small piece of it.

If all that money was merely being denied to the services and programs I listed then that would be bad enough. But the damage is compounded by using it to fund expensive and useless “Drug Task Forces” in law enforcement, the prison industry, the drug test industry, large-scale national and international interdiction efforts (DEA offices and operations in many countries around the world costs a lot!), the unnecessarily-high social and health costs of street drugs (increased theft and robbery to pay the high cost of illegal drugs as well as harm from poor quality synthesis, contaminated/industrial reagents, untreated addiction, fatal overdoses from a lack of standardized doses, etc.), loss of tax revenue from legalized and regulated access, and probably many other opportunistic bottom-feeder individuals and institutions.

The Drug War parasites will fight tooth and nail to prevent anyone from derailing their gravy train, but since it’s such a myopic and ultimately unsustainable (not to mention futile) effort it might end up taking until the U.S. as we know it starts to come undone from within, like happened to the USSR. Ending this stupidity immediately would extend the United States’ lifespan considerably, I suspect (even if it meant the loss of income for hordes of Drug War bottom-feeders).