I do agree with most of your points - I do wish policy & discussion was at least based on harm and addictiveness, etc. and not fear mongering because "schedule

I do agree with most of your points - I do wish policy & discussion was at least based on harm and addictiveness, etc. and not fear mongering because "schedule 1" == "the devil". I think alcohol, tobacco and prescription opiates cause far more harm than marijuana ever would, for instance. There is, however, a very strong corpus of data that drug enforcement as implemented in America really does achieve nothing. I posted one link further up the thread, you'll find similarly strong trends between DEA budgets, frequency of all sorts of LE activities, and addiction rates, amounts found on arrestees, etc.