I agree that Silk Road has done a great thing for helping drug users obtain the drugs they desire while maintaining their freedom, but I would compare it to antiviral drugs in the war on HIV. Silk Road is not a cure for the war on drugs but rather it is an antiviral drug cocktail that allows many users to maintain their freedom indefinitely. Some will still fall victim to the war on drugs eventually, but SR has done a great job in helping countless people maintain their freedom. A true victory in the war on drugs would be more similar to a cure for HIV. Perhaps they will give up the war on pot but if they do so it will be kicking and screaming. The federal government is still busting people for pot offenses even in states where they are not breaking the law, just the other day I read about somebody sentenced to over twenty years in federal prison for running a medical marijuana store. I think it is important to keep in mind that a lot of the people in the middle class actually make their money from the war on drugs, be they police officers, prison guards to drug abuse specialists. A good chunk of people in the middle class have their entire living depending on prohibition, especially people who go to school for sociology and social work. The thing is that the government isn't really interested in winning the war on drugs. They are interested in the money and power they gain by fighting the war on drugs. The government doesn't want to eliminate drug use, they want to perpetually be able to profit from and gain power from drug use. If you think about the government as actually wanting to eliminate drug use then you are right, they will never win. But if you think of the government as merely wanting to gain power and funding, then it looks a lot more like they have won. We have millions of people in prisons and on parole, and they have nice fat pay checks and nearly unlimited power. It depends on how you measure victory. I don't think the government really wants to stop people from using drugs, they want to suck money from the masses and have power over everybody. In that sense, people being locked up by the millions is a sign of defeat, but drugs being cheaper and easier to get than they ever have been is not really a sign of victory. For real! I am against taxation and social services in general, but it still pisses me off to think of how much money is spent on the war on drugs that could instead be spent on real beneficial things. Think of how much better off the entire world would be if all of the money spent fighting drugs was instead spent on ending poverty or improving our communities. It is absolutely disgusting, we live in a modern dark ages. If you look around there is a chart that shows technological progress over time, and there is a big two thousand year period where technology not only did not progress but actually regressed. That is the same effect the war on drugs is having, instead of money being spent on things that actually make a difference and improve our quality of life it is instead being wasted fighting drugs, and not only are we suffering from a lack of progress but we are regressing as the war on drugs is leading to all kinds of social issues and problems. It is seriously nothing short of a modern day tragedy, and hopefully in a thousand years a more sane society will look back at these times and consider them as a second dark ages. I think Tupac put it best "Instead of a war on poverty they have a war on drugs so the police can bother me". I think the war on drugs will end when the most powerful people supporting it find that they are being assassinated entirely because of their position on the war on drugs. Two lost lives and a bullet can be more politically valuable than fifty years and a majority. Another point I didn't mention in my original post is that the government has a strangle hold on the scientific research into recreational drugs as well. Not only do they fund "scientists" that say bad things about drugs, they make it next to impossible for objective researchers to even research drugs in the first place. And good luck getting a government grant to do a study on how harmless drugs actually are, not only will you never get a government grant again in your life but you will have a hell of a time even obtaining material to research in the first place. So the "scientists" who study how bad drugs are have no trouble getting funding and research material, but the objective scientists are turned into social outcasts and denied funding and prevented from obtaining research materials in the first place. Then the propaganda scientists publish bullshit and the government propagates it as truth, and nobody is even capable of doing real peer review. So in summary: 1. The government maintains power by keeping drugs illegal 2. The government and corporate interests make huge amounts of money from drugs being illegal 3. The government forces us to fund drug propaganda , even if we are against the war on drugs 4. The government controls many of the most valuable channels through which information can be distributed, namely the public school system 5. The media has it in its best interests to demonize drugs 6. The religious leaders have it in their best interests to demonize drugs 7. The government can interpret our rights away at a whim, and they do this all the time, and we have almost no ability to stop this from happening 8. Nobody who doesn't use drugs has it in their best interests to legalize drugs, they are a level above us in the social hierarchy and why would they give that up? 9. Drug users are commonly prevented from voting or otherwise influencing politics 10. Drug users are commonly used as cheap labor 11. Legitimate research into drugs is prevented and scientists who attempt to do legitimate drug research are blacklisted by the government, whereas scientists doing drug research for the government propaganda arm are funded and have their work distributed by the government