Recently Gary S. Becker has published in the February issue of the Journal of Political Economy, the results of a study he co-authored, in an article entitled "The failure of the war on drugs." Dr. Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992 to expand the economy beyond its traditional range to analyzing how market incentives in human behavior, especially in the family, human capital, crime and discrimination of minorities. You can see an article that comments on the study here

Becker takes the end result "The legalization of drugs could have a greater effect in reducing consumption than the war on drugs, not all big and disruptive system costs."

The study "The economic theory of illegal goods: The case of drugs" by Michael Grossman and Kevin M. Murphy, you can see on the website of Becker .