Over the past two weeks, tens of thousands of Mexico City residents took to the streets to protest their country's continuing drug violence. In light of the obvious suffering caused by the continuing violence, we need to re-evaluate the war on drugs.

I hate drugs. They ruin the lives of many users and impose severe costs on users' families and communities.

Unfortunately, the developed world's criminalization of many drugs has been neither effective nor free from unintended consequences. Though we may wish to judge the war on drugs by the good intentions of those who instigate it, we must evaluate it based on the abysmal outcomes that it has produced.

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