Glenn Beck: Do you continue the War on Drugs?

Ben Carson: Absolutely.

Beck: You do?

Carson: I intensify it.

Beck: Let me ask you a question. I mean, it doesn’t seem to be working now.

Carson: Yeah, well, go down to the border in Arizona like I was a few weeks ago. I mean, it’s an open highway. And the federal government isn’t doing anything to stop it.

Beck: Okay. Legalize marijuana?

Carson: I disagree with it.

The implication seems to be that the federal government isn’t trying very hard to interdict drugs coming across the Mexican border, or that the double border-fence that Carson advocates would somehow make the War on Drugs a winning proposition.

In fact, multiple federal agencies spend billions trying to interdict drugs flowing in from Mexico, and even if the Great Wall of China stretched across the whole southern border the black market in illegal drugs would continue to thrive. The federal government is not even able to keep illegal drugs out of maximum-security prisons.