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Frequent readers of this blog already know that the drug war is a massive driver of and raison d'être for the increasingly powerful surveillance state. As Radley Balko has demonstrated time and again, the drug war catalyzed the militarization of the police in the United States. Today, vast spying powers authorized under the auspices of preventing terrorism are more often used in routine drug investigations and prosecutions. 

The drug war is big business. Banks, private prison corporations, the surveillance industrial complex, and speculators make loads of money off of its spawn. 

But the public loses. We incarcerate more people per capita in the United States than any other country on earth. "We have the largest prison system on the planet," as LEAP's Peter Christ says in the video above.

Can we win the war on drugs, he asks? The answer is clearly no; people will always do drugs, whether they are legal or not. Prohibition didn't work in the 1920s, and it doesn't work now. 

It's time to end the war on drugs.

To put a dent in the architecture of oppression that enables the immoral drug war to grow, take action right now to urge your congressperson to support the Amash-Conyers amendment to limit NSA surveillance powers.