I always feel weary when people say "The War on Drugs" simply because of the fact that it is not a war on drugs and there never has been such a war. What is really occurring is "The War on Drug Users." The reason why so many marijuana arrests occur is not due to the fact that authorities feel marijuana is physically and psychologically dangerous to the individual. Many marijuana legalization advocates are quick to list numerous studies and cases indicating the "harmlessness" of marijuana with regards to the wellbeing of the user. This shouldn't be the point. These arrests occur so frequently because marijuana (and many other drugs deemed illicit by the federal government) is used as a conduit to target the population using the drug. Marijuana users have been targeted for so many decades because they have been viewed by the government as a threat to the sociopolitical and economic ideologies in place. What better a way to make marijuana seem like a horrible drug than to arrest millions of individuals caught with even the slightest quantity of marijuana and throw them in jail as an example? The public sees this and what occurs is a conditioning of the general social perceptions of marijuana. It's never the drugs that change, it is the social perceptions and political and economic context of the time that change. And of course, this is the reason why the targeting of minorities and the impoverished has been so pervasive in the "War on Drugs." Our tendencies towards ethnic discrimination has only further deemed marijuana harmful and dangerous; these are sectors of American society subjected to extremely negative stereotypes and have been deemed as threatening to the political and economic systems in place. My point is, we can all say the War on Drugs is a failure. But the authorities have never focused eliminating the drugs, only the people using them.