Why are we losing the war on drugs?

Druglords make billions on selling psychoactive drugs in rich countries, and the war is lost unless we change strategy. How could we improve on this war?
The power of money can buy anything including politicians, and I think we should go at the root of the problem if we want to resolve it. From where that money comes? From people of course, and from different layers of the society.

Portugal
Forty years of authoritarian rule under the regime established by António Salazar in 1933 had suppressed education, weakened institutions and lowered the school-leaving age, in a strategy intended to keep the population docile. The country was closed to the outside world; people missed out on the experimentation and mind-expanding culture of the 1960s. When the regime ended abruptly in a military coup in 1974, Portugal was suddenly opened to new markets and influences. When marijuana and then heroin began flooding in, the country was utterly unprepared.

In 2001 Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.

The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. It's misleading, however, to credit these positive results entirely to a change in law. Portugal's remarkable recovery, and the fact that it has held steady through several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have preferred to return to the US-style war on drugs – could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift. The official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a broad range of services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) to work together more effectively to serve their communities.

It is important to note that Portugal stabilised its opioid crisis, but it didn't make it disappear. Portugal's policy rests on three pillars: 1) there's no such thing as a soft or hard drug, only healthy and unhealthy relationships with drugs; 2) an individual's unhealthy relationship with drugs often compromise relationships with loved ones, and with themselves; and 3) the eradication of all drugs is an impossible goal.


USA
Despite dramatic increases in resources devoted to tackling the drug problem, the use of illegal drugs in the United States remains widespread.
In US drugs are criminalized and they serve long sentences in prison to addicts, but that doesn't seems to reduce the impact of drugs in their society. Instead drugs related crimes are still prominent in all US.
Haidari, the director-general of Policy and Strategy for Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the missing ingredient in the current scenario is a robust U.S. law enforcement effort to help Afghanistan starve the insurgency by attacking the Taliban's drug funding, which, he noted, was precisely what Operation Reciprocity was designed to do.

"That much money automatically involves their leadership and shows that they are narco-terrorists. You have to go after them," even if peace talks are also pursued, Haidari said. "If you want to make peace with them, and you discontinue going after them, then the DEA is no longer allowed to do what it needs to do. And that is exactly what happened."
To finance its insurgency, the Taliban was reaping anywhere from $100 million to $350 million a year from its cut of the narcotics trade in hashish, opium, heroin and morphine, according to U.S., United Nations and other estimates. Much of the money went to pay for weapons, explosives, soldiers for hire and bribes to corrupt government officials.

Drug gangs, armed with money and guns from the United States, are causing bloody mayhem in Mexico, El Salvador and other Central American countries. In Mexico alone, drug-related violence has resulted in over 100,000 deaths since 2006. This violence is one of the reasons people leave these countries to come to the United States.

Add it all up and one can see that focusing on supply has done little to curtail drug abuse while causing a host of terrible side effects.


UK
Knife crime is currently a major issue. It's often fueled by drug gangs and government seems struggling to fight it by relying only on Police patrols.
The real cause of the problem looks still not addressed, and probably we'll not see improvements until a change in strategy is decided.



Next Steps
I think the current opioid crisis underlines the importance of curbing demand. This approach, with sufficient resources and the right message, could have a major impact similar to the campaign to reduce tobacco use.
We should also decriminalize the small-scale possession of drugs for personal use, to end the flow of nonviolent drug addicts into the criminal justice system.
Communities should create first-class treatment centers where people are willing to go without fear of being prosecuted, and with the confidence that they will receive effective care. The experience of Portugal suggests that younger people who use drugs but are not yet addicted can very often be turned around.
Finally governments should fight poverty with educational programs, affordable schools, and playgrounds in critical areas where drugs are often seen as a mean to overcome poverty and achieve social status.