This is purely anecdotal, but I'm not so sure legalization would have a large effect on the rate of drug use. I consider myself fairly well insulated from drug

This is purely anecdotal, but I'm not so sure legalization would have a large effect on the rate of drug use. I consider myself fairly well insulated from drug use. In my entire social group I know of only one person that has ever tried methamphetamine (which is rampant here in Australia), and none that have tried heroin. Despite that, if you set me to the task of aquiring heroin I'd be pretty confident in my ability to do so. I doubt I'd have to go through more than 3 levels of friends to find someone that could hook me up. And that's not even taking into account darknet markets (which I imagine would be fairly easy to learn how to use as a software engineer). If I woke up tomorrow and decided to try heroin, there wouldn't be very much in the way of obstacles in my path. So for me at least, there's not that much difference between the current situation and legalisation. Especially if said legalisation requires a prescription. Arguably convincing a doctor that I'm an addict and in need of heroin is more of a barrier to entry than finding someone that sells it now.