The case built against drug laws is in part dependent on the artificial extraction of drug laws from the more comprehensive and complex social context in which the law operates. Those who favor drug legalization assume that in order to handle the multifaceted problem of drug abuse a choice is required between law enforcement or education, treatment, and prevention. There may be honest disagreement about whether funding is adequately distributed among health, legal, and educational approaches to counter drug abuse, but no one favors a strategy that uses only law enforcement. One section of the article briefly reviews the history of societies that have experimented with drug legalization. These reviews show the failure of such a policy in creating healthier and less costly societies. 140 footnotes