The "War on Drugs", policies that have gone vastly unchanged for over 40 years, is an outdated, dysfunctional attempt at drug prevention that needs to be severely altered. While the White House has dropped the term "War on Drugs" due to it being "counter-productive", the fact remains that the draconian laws present in our nation still excessively punish drug use in the US.
We have the largest prison population in the world. In 2011, about 3% of our population was enduring some sort of correctional action. This is largely due to our current drug laws. the most heinous of which being "Mandatory Minimums". These can, and have, caused myriad cases of punishment so excessive, that powerless judges lament the injustice. In order to fix this, changes to mandatory minimums must be made.