I see this issue from a completely different perspective. I see it as, we have a social problem: Some people use drugs that ruin their lives. Rather than using

I see this issue from a completely different perspective. I see it as, we have a social problem: Some people use drugs that ruin their lives. Rather than using a lot of counseling and trying to actually help people get off their habit, we use the criminal justice system to put them and those who help them in jail, and providing windfall profits to criminals who are willing to ignore the laws. Economically, these are equivalent to a high tax on illegal drug use; they raise the street price. But instead of providing tax revenues, this tax is extremely expensive to enforce and provides no revenues. Under this perspective, the current system is pretty much unjustifiable. You could just ban advertising and tax it heavily and use the tax money for anti-drug rehab programs, and have the same effects as we currently have without all the drug violence and mass imprisonment.