Its funny. For the better part of a century we have had the Drug War, useful to politicians, heavily funded, but producing no results. Prices of drugs have remained about the same or gone down. Drugs are one of those things like poverty and climate change that everybody is against but that never change. The question arises of who really wants to end the drug trade.

From a libertarian point of view, Chapo Guzman is a figure to be admired, having started from nothing and built a highly profitable international business despite onerous federal regulation.You know, like Walmart.

The contribution to world employment is large. Peasants in Colombia growing coca, like poppy cultivators in Afghanistan and Mexico, do not want the drug trade ended because they make more money supplying the drug trade than in planting potatoes. This applies to multitudinous growers of marijuana in countless regions, to include Humboldt County in California.

users of drugs very much want their supply continued.

Oxycontin is credited with a hundred thousand overdose deaths in America alone. If that many are dying, a very great many more must be using and surviving.  This means that big pharma is making a killing, so tospeak as are the corrupt doctors and pharmacies selling the stuff. Neither they nor their customers want the supply to dry up.

Cough syrup containing ephedrine, used in making methamphamine, was made illegal because so many meth labs popped up in the US. Meth is highly popular in America How do you suppose college students would get through exams without their speed?

The purported war on drugs also provides jobs and federal benefits for armies of agents of the DEA and FBI. These are desirable for the adventurous who do not want to sit all day in offices as raiding narco houses is fun. Police forces get federal grants for pursuing dealers. For Mexican cops on the take, which is to say Mexican cops, bribes are attractive. By many accounts, American cops batten on the same sources of money. The drug trade is so lucrative that bribes can be high.Politicians and governmental officials also often are for sale at all levels. The United States is far from incorruptible.

The drug trade is said to be worth sixty billion dollars a year. I am not sure where the figure comes from or how it is calculated, but it is plausible. The American market is massive. Where to you suppose that sixty billion goes? Not into classy pickups and gold chains for Latin American narcos. That much money needs to be professionally laundered by the big kids, banks, maybe hedge funds, big commercial deals. Intelligence agencies are frequently suspected, being unaccountable, for practical purposes above the law, and having the connections and political pull to get away with it. Those doing his, as for example bank presidents,  know they are doing it. To do this, the launderers would need protection at high levels.

S......