We can start with the worry here about "the innocent" having their lives destroyed. Of course. That is essential to all the many tentacles of the repressive machinery created in the U.S. over the last half-century, beginning with the War on Drugs. None of these programs is intended to catch "malefactors"; all are intended, primarily, to terrify the innocent.
There is, of course, much more to say about all these programs, but as a beginning one _must_ focus on them as state terrorism.
^^^^^ CB: Secondly, and more specifically the so-called War on Drugs aim is to create something of a new Jim Crow system, as Michelle Alexander argues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow