Following your own first link lead to this, statistically:
And using 1900, an historical high (pardon the pun), due to morphine addictions growing out of the civil war is rather disingenuous. That decade (00-10) spurred the first federal laws (1914) regarding narcotics in food products and medicines because of a growing awareness of a runaway addiction problem, don't you know. Those laws delivered an almost immediate decline in addiction which lasted all the way into the 50's.
Look. It is my position that the WoD is wrongly applied in the first place. I agree with the libertarian view that it is failing, or has failed, but I disagree wholly with the reason for that failure, and with the idea that we should just simply throw up our hands and give up.
Enforcement, properly and lawfully executed, must certainly be part of the equation. Though I would do it in an entirely different manner. Perhaps looking for common ground would be more constructive than being diametrically opposed.
Secondly, societal norms must be restored to curtail the growing subculture that encourages the use of drugs. Family must be readily encouraged and preferred, discarding the notion of easy divorces, and the current preference toward single parent households. What one endorses, one will get more of - Endorse vice, get more vice. Endorse virtue, get more virtue.
What are you talking about? The article said there were 400,000 opiate addicts in 1880 due to addicted Civil War veterans. That works out to 0.8% (population 50,000,000). By 1900, only 0.5% were addicted to either cocaine or opiates. That means there was a substantial fall in the addiction rate while drugs were still freely available. I'm not sure where you get that 1900 was a high.
Those laws delivered an almost immediate decline in addiction which lasted all the way into the 50's.
How do you know this was a causal relationship? Alcohol prohibition didn't reduce drinking for very long. By the time it was repealed, consumption was near pre-prohibition levels.
What one endorses, one will get more of - Endorse vice, get more vice. Endorse virtue, get more virtue.
Doesn't seem to work out that way when you look at addiction figures for Singapore, the US, Iran, and the Netherlands. And the addiction rate now is triple what it was in 1900, according to the DOJ.
That indicates that there is no solution within the realm of political governance.