I'm taking a criminal justice course at school right now and I've read that we can't win the war on drugs by continuing what we're doing now. How could we at least stem the flow of illegal drugs?

The simplest solution is to legalize the majority of drugs that aren't directly harmful or have medicinal uses, and then actively sell or otherwise tax them.

Cuts down tremendously on illegal drug use and generates profit.

I don't know much regarding the drugs which are completely harmful though, so I can't contribute any meaningful opinion regarding their circumstances.

2<< you are right but if we tax all durgs and make them legal i think that would make it so less people use them because most people who use them were i live are teens and they do it mostly to be cool and rebel agenst there parents. i just dont see the point in the illegal dugs never did but i was raised with them in my life so i just dont see them as others do. all i got to say

>>3 i would add on that some people dont do it because they're illegal, so there is the possibility that MORE people would do the drug. however, i personally think that legalizing some of these less harmful drugs like Marijuana would be beneficial against the war on drugs because some of the prescription pills we give people nowadays can be potentially more harmful than some of the illegal drugs that we have. Not only that, but we also eliminate a large portion of the funds drug dealers and other criminals get while benefiting from the taxing of said drugs. The real problem would be 1) determining between "harmful" and "non-harmful" drugs in a way that we can all agree with and 2) actually getting people to listen more to factual evidence on what makes a drug harmful rather than their own personal bias in order to succeed in solving problem 1

>>4 I agree Kumo, and quite frankly, we could fallow the current schedule system with a minimum of tweaking, but we'd need to actually respect it, not use it as an excuse to make stuff we may not agree with illegal. This will also free up a Lot of money that would otherwise go to the private jail system to keep pot heads locked up, and a portion of it could go to the "drug war" but I'd suggest a more "win their hearts and minds" approach then the hack and slash of today.