The pharmaceutical industry has a pretty big lobby, so does big tobacco, and don't even get me started on the alcohol industry. If one of them finds a way to p

The pharmaceutical industry has a pretty big lobby, so does big tobacco, and don't even get me started on the alcohol industry. If one of them finds a way to patent drugs that are currently illegal or otherwise profit from it, legalization will happen. Honestly, in many places, legalization has already happened, look at the coffee shops in the Netherlands and the dispensaries in North America. The police industrial complex might be attached to their cash cow, but everyone else in the capitalist system wants to get rich too, and I suspect in the long run that'll win out. Also, much as how after a few thousand years of civilization people eventually wised up to human sacrifice wasn't actually a good idea and was not in any way required to make the sun come up, maybe at some point in the future we'll realize that harsh criminal penalties don't actually solve the drug problem. France has some of the strictest laws against cannabis use in Europe, and also some of the highest rates of consumption, or at least it did last time I checked.