If we accept the pithy definition of insanity as doing the same thing twice and expecting a completely different result, then the U.S. “War on Drugs” has been insane for nearly two decades. Even worse, everyone associated with the effort knows it’s insane. American drug policy is hugely expensive and unfairly punitive, but we keep returning to the same failed practices again and again, long after we should have known better.

Rolling Stone has an article exploring the dimensions of this failure. As it sums up:

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs—with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes—a twelvefold increase since 1980—with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana—and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible.

Every push that the United States has made in the “drug war” has led to a pullback that’s twice as hard. As the article makes clear, the attempted clampdown on cocaine production in Colombia, which includes billions of dollars of military aid and the widespread spraying of pesticides, stimulated a civil war, a simple shift of production areas, and eventually, the expansion of methamphetamine in the United States as Mexican cartels sought a product they could produce domestically.

Funds allocated for drug treatment programs have consistently withered in favor of tough-on-crime measures and pork-laden high-tech solutions (drug-patrolling submarines, Blackhawk helicopters), even as studies showed treatment programs to be the most effective solution to drug abuse. Attempts to crack down on marijuana as a gateway drug—even as studies undermine the truth of that claim—have led to neglect of the methamphetamine epidemic and threats to imprison the sick and elderly for using marijuana on a doctor’s recommendation. It has also led to the institution of no-knock raids on suspected drug dealers, often with devastating consequences for innocent people.

Finally, the “drug war” has resulted in the world’s largest prison population—more than 2 million people—one where “African-Americans are imprisoned for drugs at 10 times the rate of white people” according to a recent study by the Justice Policy Institute. Even if teens found with a joint or two avoid prison, they’re often forced to forfeit financial aid for higher education, a punishment that benefits neither them nor the community they live in.

What’s worst about this colossal waste of money, lives and potential is that it lacks the support of a majority of the population. According to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online, polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that possession of small amounts of marijuana should not be treated as a criminal offense (PDF). The same source indicates that in a 2005 poll 78% of Americans believed marijuana should be made “legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering” (PDF). Beyond that, the Rolling Stone article reports “More than forty percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana.”

So why is popular opinion (and tax money and young lives) so easily tossed away? Part of the reason may be that doing nothing is the safe course politically. Speaking out against our current drug-enforcement system opens up a candidate to a variety of political attacks (It could also open up a candidate to votes from voters ill-pleased with the current state of affairs, but it would take a courageous politician to bet on that calculus.)

More frustratingly, though, our current, ruined “drug war” seems to be yet another instance of ideology outstripping information, placing it with dubious companions such as supply-side economics, abstinence-only education and “creation science.” The point of science—and the wisdom of government—should be to determine which programs work best and to use tehm. If studies show that drug-treatment programs are the most effective way to reduce drug abuse, then that should be the cornerstone of our policy. But soundbites and outrage and carefully funded campaigns begin, and we’re left with a muddle of a system, one that pleases few and punishes far more.