I often bring up Prohibition and how politicians learned how much money they could make by banning things. Kennedys made their wealth that way. So War on Drugs, Banning Guns, and Banning anything for that matter take on an entirely new perspective with such information.

Your TIL let's me go back to before Prohibition and while I am a big history buff I did never really dig into this so was unaware of it. Though I knew Opium was a big deal I never really dug into it.

I do know that once we invaded Afghanistan which is one of the largest producers of such things in the world they suddenly had record production. You would think if we were truly doing a War On Drugs it would have been reduced rather than INCREASED by the presence of our troops.