What purpose is served in criminalizing drug use?

[HiPointDem]

44. Lots of reasons.

1. As others have noticed, suppression, surveillance, repression of minorities & the poor (two formations likely to cause trouble, plus treating them like shit & criminalizing them provides 'the threat of a bad example' to middle class actors who might attempt to make common cause with them for economic justice a la MLK).

2. Military build-up, networked militarized towns, cities, regions.

3. Keynesian pump-priming directed at favored regions and actors.

4. An excuse to conduct militarized operations in other countries and a budget to do it with.

5. A pretense of 'fighting' the drug epidemic destroying communities & families (though various government & corporate actors have been proven to be dope pushers themselves).

6. As others have noted, rentier $$ to private prisons....

7. An excuse for general surveillance, surveillance both of drug activity qua drug activity and of the violence it brings with it.

8. Illegal drugs = criminality = violence, bad neighborhoods, fear = middle-class support for repression and police.