I am not arguing pro or con on drug legalization or ending the drug war.
I am pointing out that the argument in this article is claptrap and statements such as Paul’s which you present are historically ignorant and at best is a ludicrous bromide.
The 1914 date is obviously a reference to the Harrison Act, which was the watershed for federal antidrug crusading. Surely you can’t think it claptrap, ignorant, or ludicrous to ignore the pitiful little progressive gestures made at regulating opioids and cocaine from the Gay 90s to 1914. Because there isn’t more than a trinkle in that era, and none before. They levied taxes in the 90s, passed the PFDA to attack all manner of food and drug business, not just the kinds that are part if the Drug War today, and I think banned the importation of opium for nonmedical purposes a few years before Harrison. Whoopty-doo.
Before the overzealous meddling of the same folks who brought us prohibition, drugs were a state and local issue, if that. As with most things before the progressive era, we were better off.