Blaming drugs for societal problems gives bureaucrats to blame away from themselves because: 1) the opposition to such policies gives them someone else to blame if the anti-drug policies fail, 2) there are so many possible solutions that, when the policy fails, they can claim that a) they favored a slightly different solution than what was implemented, or b) other people (police, judges, etc.) failed to do do their part of the job in upholding the policy