[Ken H]

Bottom line, China went from very low addiction to very high addiction between the time Britain started importing opium and the time it stopped. On the other hand, We nipped it in the bud back around 1900 and as a result of the war on drugs, our addiction rate is still only 1.5%, and that's by YOUR numbers.

We nipped nothing in the bud. Drugs were legal in the US since colonial times, yet no one saw it as a problem for fedgov to handle until the progressives came along.

If you'll read the DEA link I provided, you'll see that addiction to opium was high in 1880 due to addiction by Civil War veterans - 400,000 in a population of 50M. That's 0.8% addicted to opium alone.

Yet by 1900, says the DEA, the addiction rate to either cocaine or opium was 0.5%. That's a significant decline that would be even greater if they had not included cocaine addicts in the 1900 figure.

So from 1880 to 1900, when drugs were legal, addiction fell. From 1900 to 2000 addiction rose. Your argument that prohibition nipped a growing problem in the bud is not credible.

[DiogenesLamp]

Your argument that we wouldn’t have turned out like China is not credible. China legalized Drugs. We Prohibited them. They collapsed, We survived. Figure it out.