Not surprisingly, the report has led to increased calls for the legalization of drugs as a panacea to end the violence and criminal-justice costs of current U.S. drug policies. Just last week, Reps. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas) introduced a bill in Congress to remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances, leaving it up to the states to decide if they want to legalize it.

But legalization is no panacea. Without question, abuse and addiction involving all substances (tobacco, alcohol, illegal and controlled prescription drugs) is the nation's top health-care and criminal-justice problem, filling our hospitals and crowding our courts and prisons. But making illegal drugs more readily available is hardly the answer.