Doing Drugs

After reading this, and articles like it, I sometimes wonder if the War on Drugs is worth it.  Leaving aside the question about whether it's winnable -- it certainly doesn't seem to be, in the decades that we've pursued it  -- I wonder if its worth the time and money we put into it.  

In one of the Tom Clancy novels, his president says that the drug problem in, I believe, Colombia is actually the fault of the Americans who buy the drugs, and that his solution is to intensify the results of being caught with drugs -- making users of recreational drugs have to do public service,  such as cleaning the streets.  I remember thinking, at the time that i read that, he's assuming that punitive measures work.  And sometimes they do work.  I don't know that, but I'm willing to think that its possible.  But as a general response, they seem to work as well as Prohibition did. 

I don't like the idea of saying so, just decriminalize drug use?  make it acccepted and legal?   Control it as we do alcohol?  I don't like it because somehow it feels like we're giving up, letting the bad guys win.  But there are times when I wonder if that would not be better.