By far the most damaging drug is alcohol. Far, far and away the most damaging, in every objective study and analysis. We tried alcohol prohibition and found out

By far the most damaging drug is alcohol. Far, far and away the most damaging, in every objective study and analysis. We tried alcohol prohibition and found out that very every ill caused by alcohol being legal we would create even more ills by making it illegal. The same is true of other drugs, and this is an important thing to understand about society in general and its relationship to law. We cannot legislate morality. We cannot run people's lives. We cannot, fundamentally, stop people from making major mistakes with their lives. Even life threatening mistakes. Nor should we. Liberty means the ability to fuck up your life. And to the extent that all of our lives are intertwined in a modern society it means to a certain degree the ability to fuck up other people's lives too. That's part of the bargain. But in every instance liberty has proven to be superior to oppressive collective control, even when that control attempts to be benevolent. Ultimately responsibility must devolve to the individual, because regardless of the law it does anyway. As you yourself point out people are still having their lives ruined by drug use. And those drugs are very, very illegal. It's tempting to imagine you can get rid of something by making it illegal, but in some cases, recreational drug use being the prime example, it often just causes even more problems.