Ben Wallace-Wells of The Rolling Stone has written a piece that covers America’s response to the global drug trade.

Titled How America Lost the War on Drugs, the article highlights the missteps taken by the US Federal Government in dealing with the issues of illegal drugs.

Thanks to new research, U.S. policy-makers knew with increasing certainty what would work and what wouldn’t. The tragedy of the War on Drugs is that this knowledge hasn’t been heeded. We continue to treat marijuana as a major threat to public health, even though we know it isn’t. We continue to lock up generations of teenage drug dealers, even though we know imprisonment does little to reduce the amount of drugs sold on the street. And we continue to spend billions to fight drugs abroad, even though we know that military efforts are an ineffective way to cut the supply of narcotics in America or raise the price.

The Global Drug Trade is currently valued at $321.6 Billion.

[Slate]