It would be hard to persuade you in a comment, but I guess it doesn't hurt to try. Cocaine and opium remained large social problems in the US for decades befor

It would be hard to persuade you in a comment, but I guess it doesn't hurt to try. Cocaine and opium remained large social problems in the US for decades before they were finally outlawed. The consensus during those decades was that a federal law against them would be an unacceptable compromise of the liberty of the individual. (Various states had banned cocaine and opium in a timely manner, but these statewide bans did not do much to discourage use because of how easy it is for a resident of one state to get drugs from another state.) Then when they did pass a federal law against the drugs, to appease the pro-liberty faction, the law was not an outright ban, but rather a "stamp tax" where the details were such that it would be unprofitable to sell drugs and pay the tax (and the penalty for not paying included significant jail time). The same thing happened with federal income tax: its enactment was delayed for decades out of a belief that it would be a violation of the liberty-promoting measures in the Constitution.