The War on Drugs as a means of organized oppression

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I was reading Sunday's paper and there was an article on legalizing and taxing marijuana in the State of California and my thought was, "yeah right, the Feds will just come in and shut it all down." And then I read a little further and came across this editorial: http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/978041.html The two things that struck me the most were 1) the statistics and 2) the idea of the war on drugs as a vehicle to oppress African Americans. 1.3% of us have been addicted to illegal drugs since 1914 when we started keeping track. The number is still 1.3%. And we spent over a trillion dollars for what purpose? To reduce drug use? We threw all those people into prison, made felons out of them for what? 13% of the nations drug users are black. 70% of those imprisoned for drug use are black. What does that tell you? Prohibition didn't work for alcohol. What's different about illegal drugs? Thoughts?