The reason why drug production and consumption should be legal is not that this will necessarily lead to better social outcomes as measured by conventional stan

The reason why drug production and consumption should be legal is not that this will necessarily lead to better social outcomes as measured by conventional standards, it is because prohibitions on drugs are an insult to liberty. It is ridiculous for a supposedly free society to try to stop people from putting substances into their own bodies just like it would be a ridiculous for a free society to try to stop people from, for example, having consensual sex with each other. Drug prohibition is in principle incompatible with liberty. If you want a free society, some things must be legal even if the social impact of allowing them to be legal seems to many people to be negative. There are already laws against many of the things that people blame on drugs. I know that it is tempting to many people to criminalize drugs rather than to try to do a more effective job of policing things that people blame on drugs. But this is the same kind of mentality that would, for example, get rid of free speech because sometimes free speech leads people to commit violence. That kind of mentality is a pathway towards the US becoming like China. Another issue with the drug war is unfair enforcement. Well-off people have absolutely no problem getting illegal drugs. A huge number of successful professionals do illegal drugs on a regular basis and only rarely even come close to potentially getting in legal trouble. Meanwhile poor people and dealers are probably more likely to get busted. The drug war, by artificially making certain substances sell at prices that are vastly higher than what it costs to manufacture them, also creates a type of black market currency that enables the activities of all sorts of groups that engage in actually harmful behavior like killing people.