In 1988 the United States Congress passed laws declaring improbably that the USA would be 'drug free' by 1995.
In 1998 the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs committed itself to the implausible goal of eradicating the trade in heroin and cocaine within a decade--at a time when global heroin production had trebled and global cocaine production had doubled.
Somewhere in Australia, almost every year for the past quarter-century,...