a good question with an equally good answer i believe;

After decades of warfare, the federal drug war has become a predictable cycle.
Drug dealer, drug gang, or drug user busted. DEA agents celebrate the bust. Newspaper reporters laud the DEA. Defendants prosecuted, convicted, and sent to jail.
And then?
Then, the cycle repeats itself. Drug dealer, drug gang, or drug user busted. DEA agents celebrate the bust. Newspaper reporters laud the DEA. Defendants prosecuted, convicted, and sent to jail.
And again and again and again. Month after month. Year after year.  Decade after decade. The cycle never stops.
Normally when one wages a war, he strives for victory. But no one ever defines what victory in the drug war would look like. The feds seem satisfied to simply engage in the same cycle, over and over again, into perpetuity.
Some proponents of the drug war say that if only the federal government really cracked down in the war on drugs, the war could be won. But what they fail to recognize is that over the years, the federal government really has cracked down.
The feds adopted mandatory-minimum sentences, which took sentencing discretion out of the hands of federal judges and imposed draconian sentences for drug-law violations.
They enacted asset-forfeiture laws, which enable the DEA to seize people’s money without charging them with any offense.


https://www.fff.org/2018/08/30/what-would-it-take-to-win-the-drug-war/