It didn’t work with Prohibition, either.
It’s no secret that Alcoholics Anonymous came into its own AFTER the repeal. And it was considered revolutionary. It also got diluted down quickly as people didn’t like the founders’ emphasis on a specific faith, Christianity.
Also the prohibitionist church hymns of the era preceding it were telling of the loss of faith. Oh if we do this or that or the other worldly thing, our woes will go. Well no they won’t. You think Satan is that easy to stop? Only one thing stops Satan.
Probhition didn’t “work” because the People knew how to get rid of it. Repeal the 18th Amendment. The Statists were careful not to repeat that mistake with the War on Drugs.
Well, actually, it depends on the definition of “work”.
Cirrhosis death rates for men dropped from 29.5 to 10.7 per 100,000.
Admission rates for alcohol psychosis dropped from 10.1 to 4.7 per 100,000.
Best estimates (whatever that means) puts the alcohol consumption rate declining somewhere between 30 and 50%.
No, it did not stop all alcohol consumption, but neither do murder laws stop all murder.
Having said all this - whether or not the drug war is “working”, such seizures of private property is completely immoral and symptomatic of a government gone power-mad.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html