Back in the summer of 2004, I visited the D.A.R.E. International Training Conference to gather intel for SSDP. The two keynote speakers were Karen Tandy and John Walters. I offer a snippet, verbatim, from Walters' speech to a room full of D.A.R.E. officers, which I believe sheds some light on the inner workings of the man's twisted noggin:

"I also came here to thank some of you who have, and urge some of you who haven't -- your colleagues -- to help us with two other things that I think are important. As you know, one of the great manifestations of cynicism about this problem is the enormous and extensively funded campaign to legalize drugs in the United States. No people are more affected by the confusion this causes than the young people you are trying to work with. We have adopted the aggressive posture of going into states where this has been proposed as ballot initiatives, and will be on the ballots in some states again this year. We have aggressively gone to state legislatures where these measures have appeared in the last year. I want to thank, sincerely, those of you who represent states and officials, some of yourselves, who have spoken up. You know that when you speak up, that this has become a very nasty debate. Of criticism, accusing people who have public responsibilities of meddling in partisan politics, of using money to try to present lies to young people, and to criticize those who stand up and tell the truth. I'm coming to ask you to stand up with us again. They WILL criticize you. They WILL try to stop you. They WILL try to shut you up. DO IT ANYWAY."

Translation: "The White House has been illegally campaigning against the will of states who believe that it is barbaric to lock up seriously ill people for easing their pain with marijuana. Of course, this is probably going to send a message to our nation's kids that the federal government is run by a bunch of heartless thugs. We need YOU to convince them otherwise. Good luck."

If I am able to find the right equipment, I'll upload the entire speech to YouTube one of these days.

Motivation is a big question.  I’ll try to narrow it down to maybe a few motivations.

At least one trigger or flashpoint that sends people into some hysterical anti-drug crusade is when parents have problems with their kids’ use of drugs. 

The consequences of drug use can range from zero to the ultimate, but that’s true of any potentially dangerous hobby.  Riding a motorcycle is dangerous.  Motorcycles injure and kill people every day.  But if tragedy happens on a motorcycle, no parent responds by making a career out of busting Harley Davidson dealers, or those pesky Suzuki dealers (at least no one I’ve heard of).

It’s easy to redirect fear, anger, grief, and even an illness onto an inanimate object. Get rid of the object and fear, anger, grief or illness supposedly disappears with it.  It’s called scapegoating.  If someone comes along who fears drugs like pot or mushrooms will open the doors of perception in a way that shines a light on incipient fascism; or exposes fascism’s enablers, the religious right, then any opportunity to scapegoat this dreaded tree of knowledge will be explored and utilized. It is, after all, a war.

A perfect example is the case of entertainer Art Linkletter and the suicide of his daughter, who jumped to her death ostensibly as a result of an LSD ingestion, although the drug was never detected in her system in the autopsy, and is now believed to have played no part whatsoever in her death.  Apparently, she’d taken LSD two-years prior to her suicide.

In a TV interview Linkletter admitted it was the positive-thinking guru, the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan for 52-years, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, who redirected Linkletter in the midst of his fatherly grief to go on the road to tout a high profile anti-drug campaign.  It was during this time that Linkletter made an idiot of himself in front of Congress and the world by displaying his ignorance of recreational drugs and the drug culture.

The motives of authoritarian leaders need not be the same as the motives of their authoritarian followers.  Scapegoating complicates the drug war in a way that allows the puppet-masters to disguise their motives.  Understanding the scapegoating process usually nullifies its effects.  Just say know.    

Trivia Addendum:  Coincidentally, the words “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical” come from the Greek word pharmakos, which means scapegoat.

Giordano

1. I've had jobs I didn't LIKE, but never one where I "did things I didn't agree with" -- in other words, things you know are wrong. "Just doing my job" didn't fly for the Nazis, and it don't fly for cops.
2. Harm reduction? Oh, you mean like kicking in my door in the middle of the night, holding my CHILDREN at gunpoint while you ransack my home? And since we all know that the "ruthless Mexican cartels" WOULD NOT EXIST without YOU, tell me, who reduces the harm YOU do?
3. "Execute" is a very good word for what you do -- either gun us down in cold blood or take our lives away one piece at a time; "enforcing" the laws -- what about laws against breaking and entering? child endangerment? perjury? theft? excessive force? I could go on, but you get the picture; the cops who busted me broke more laws in that ONE day than I have in my entire life.
4. YOU might be living in the "dawning of a police state," out here it's high noon. And don't blame the people for the "Us versus them" attitude of law enforcement --"Us" (cops) have guns and badges, grenades and tanks. "Them" (the people) have homes and families. What are you afraid of?
5. I've known for a long time it ain't about drugs. It's about arrogant, self-serving politicians who are willing to sacrifice our lives and the lives of our children to further their own careers. So, why is this okay with you?

This is simplified, but I propose a three step explanation to what motivates the drug warriors.

First of all there is the indoctrination. This is driven by all the propaganda and scare mongering that both state and parents stand for(I will not address the genesis of the anti-drug establishment here but refer readers to Mike Gray's "Drug Crazy").

This indoctrination happens very early - quite a lot like how most religious beliefs get passed on to children. When it works (which it often does) it is because pretty much no one knows about drugs, so they do what they normally do: believe in other people who seem sincere (and if anything the DEA folks seem sincere!).

This means they learn their hatred of drugs in a way that really doesn't involve much critical thinking or studying. It is for the most part a second hand/learned emotional response, and I suppose the parroting can go on for so long that in the end the anti-drug person really feels strongly about the issue.

As sceptic Michael Shermer wrote to answer the question "Why smart people believe in stupid things": they have acquired their belief in a non-rational way, but being so smart they are really good at defending their belief even when it's not true. (Clearly this is aided by all the well-known biases of the human mind like availability bias, general bias and dislike of cognitive dissonance).

Secondly, when something gathers a significant number of adherent these people create institutions to embody their ideology/religion/philosophy. Today there are numerous big and powerful players who make up the anti-drug establishment and who embody the specific War on Drugs approach to fixing the problems with drugs. Such institutions will always try to reproduce themselves, keep alive and expand - just like a living organism or species does.

Thirdly we have the individuals acting within those institutions. Most of the time they simply work there. It is where they earn the money that keeps them alive, gives them food and puts their children through college.

What such individuals figure out real fast is that freedom of speech is not absolute. If someone speaks openly about the failure of the Drug War that person will be punished simply because he is acting illoyally towards his work place (this is one way how institutions sustain themselves). That's why LEAP is populated by EX-cops: they no longer have anything to lose from being honest and truthful, but they would have lost everything because there really isn't any free speech for practical purposes.

In simple terms it is egoistic self-interest that makes a VAST amount of people keep their mouths shut even if they know better. So when the propaganda/indoctrination has failed there is always persecution to beat people into submission.

The situation is a so-called "Nash Equilibrium": it is such an inoptimal solution we have fixated upon, but no one individual has an incentive to defect from the Drug War Rethoric as long as everyone else sticks to their guns.