The astonishing but true story of White Boy Rick Wershe is an example of why the War on Drugs has been a trillion-dollar policy failure for nearly half a century. Rick Wershe, Jr. was a street-savvy Detroit white kid in a dysfunctional family. His mother fled an abusive marriage, leaving her children behind. Rick raised himself. He didn't do drugs, but he knew important people in the narcotics underworld. The FBI had him infiltrate a powerful black drug gang with City Hall connections. Rick did a good job. Too good. He became a key witness in a homicide. It involved top-level police corruption which blocked the investigation of the drug gang's killing of a little boy. White Boy Rick's FBI work caused shock waves that went to the very top of the Justice Department. The FBI abandoned him and local narcs snared him in a drug case that carried a life prison sentence.