http://www.dea.gov/pubs/pressrel/pr122805.html

Listed below are Drug Enforcement Administration successes from Fiscal Year 2005. [...]

Financial and Money Laundering Operations:

DEA Operations stripped drug traffickers of nearly $1.9 billion in drug proceeds. This includes $1.4 billion in asset seizures and $477 million in drug seizures.

According to the most recent available estimates from the US government (What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy), the total US drug trade was worth about $64 billion in 2000. Levels of drug use seem to have declined since then, so I’m willing to give the D.E.A. credit for a FULL 1% effectiveness (instead of the 0.75% that a $64 billion drug trade would give.)

………

Now although I understand that determining how many people are actually using/selling/distributing/etc illegal drugs against those who actually get caught doing so is nearly an impossible task, I still offer these figures as ‘evidence’ presented by the same government that claims that we are getting a handle on the supposed epidemic problem.

Personally, I make no claim to the veracity of these government supplied numbers [no matter how silly], but at least they offer you an idea of how big a failure the war on drugs has [always] been.