Ninety-six years since Congress prohibited the use and sales of narcotics (drugs derived from opium, or which mimic them), users and sellers of the substances in Snohomish County, Washington, continue to flaunt the law in order to satisfy their habits or reap the tremendous profit that prohibition makes possible, a report by KIRO-TV in Everett demonstrates.

Prohibition agents from several cooperating agencies, including ATF, DEA, ICE, IRS, and the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force, executed multiple search and arrests warrants earlier this month, responding to alleged OxyContin sales and money laundering, according to KIROTV.com, at homes in Mill Creek, Lynnwood and Everett.

Kelvin Crenshaw, Special Agent in Chart of the ATF Seattle Field Division told KIRO, "Together, these agents and officers relentlessly pursued thugs who peddled illegal drugs on our streets and in our communities and arrogantly flaunted their illegal gains. Today is a bad day for these drug dealers, a good day for law enforcement and a win for our communities," said Kelvin Crenshaw, Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Seattle Field Division.

David Borden, Executive Director of StoptheDrugWar.org, told the drug policy reform newsletter Drug War Chronicle, "December was a bad month for those drug dealers, but a good day for their rival dealers who have already taken over their former market share. It's doubtful that Snohomish County has one fewer pill on the street illegally than they had before. Prohibition doesn't work."

In 2005, a coalition of professional associations led by the neighboring King County Bar Association adopted a resolution calling current drug control policies "fundamentally flawed" and calling for "a new framework of state-level regulatory control over psychoactive substances, intended to render the illegal markets for such substances unprofitable."