So how much time have you spend inside a crack house at night with no electricity? How many times have you helped a junkie find a vein in his foot because all the others were too scarred to use? How many times have you seen wives with children in tow trying to track down their husbands on payday so that they could get some cash for groceries before the dope man got a hold of it? Have you ever mingled with the early morning crowd at the methadone clinic to see what other drugs they were willing to trade their liquid handcuffs for? Do you know anyone who left their seven-year-old daughter at the pharmacy - forgetting her as they ran off with the dilaudid prescription they just got filled?
Them’s a lot of strawmen for one paragraph.
Never had the pleasure myself.
This discussion is going off the rails. In general I respect a no drugs ever guy like Trump more than I respect a pothead - and I think pot should be legal. Not all virtues should be mandatory. Cocaine and heroin can actually kill you dead on the spot, which is a whole different level. If you believe in federal food and drug safety laws outlawing cocaine follows logically.
If you're a federalist/state's rights conservative the argument isn't so clear cut. Under federalism it's unlikely that most drugs would remain illegal in every state.
I'm not ready to endorse New Deal definitions of the limits of federal power just to stop every potential overdose. Leave it to the states.