Despite the annual arrest of over 1.5 million Americans, and the highest per-capita prison population of any nation in the world, drug use has increased, black market crime has flourished, and completely innocent Americans have been killed by police action. 1, 2, 3

Any definition of a policy "working" which involves rendering such a large proportion of our citizenry into prisoners and ex-convicts (many of whom lose the right to vote) is incompatible with democracy. Further, this kind of effectiveness leaves open the question of whether drug policy was designed to eliminate particular groups of people from the voting rolls as some kind of cynical political maneuver.