I'm about halfway through one hell of a book by Daniel Okrent titled "Last Call," which is the history of Prohibition in the United States. It's terrifically researched and interesting, and you can trace the same sort of failures we have with our current War on Drugs.
For a better summary of the book than mine, a couple of articles in Slate will do fine:
http://www.slate.com/id/2255385
http://www.slate.com/id/2254948