“Let 20,000,000 kids burn themselves out, nodding out on street corners and in public parks. Sure.”
Well that would be approximately 1/3 of the people under 20 in the USA. Since I see this daily from the ER vantage point. I can tell you that you are way off. Since I also have seen the WOD from the coroner’ office perspective I can tell you that greater than 90% of the people shot in our city are related to drug dealing. Read up on Prohibition and the Kennedy clan and see who got rich and enjoyed living high while the others burned. The Oligarchs love the WOD and so do the COPS. Check the term NARCOTERRORIST. Might find some bankers and others that fit that term.
I also forgot to mention that as scientist I believe in the scientific method. We’ve done the experiment once, prohibition, and it didn’t work. We’re repeating it again and it isn’t working and we are getting exactly the same result. If this was a drug trial and it was found that the drug didn’t work and was harming people it would be immediately stopped. Prohibition has never worked at anytime in history that I can find. It is against human nature.
Or did I miss some nuance in there? Some nuance that makes you more and more right, the more you think about it, and less and less susceptible to second-guessing on your primary value judgment for free access to the world's most powerfully addictive substances?