False choice fallacy. No, I would rather *NOT* spend billions of dollars every year on the war on drugs, but bad and stupid people make it necessary. As for taking away the rights of the majority, I say again that is occurring on all fronts of government, and is not the sole province of the necessary effort to stop poison from killing people.
I will point out that Singapore has far less drug use, at a far less cost. They solve the problem by killing the drug dealers. Our problem is this. Though we keep calling it a "War", we never fight it like it's an actual war.
If the drug production facilities in Columbia and Afghanistan were reduced to smoking piles of ashes, then we could be making the argument that we are fighting it as a "war."
Nobody ever died from the proximate cause of smoking too much pot (unlike the toxic legal drug alcohol).
So your solution is a totalitarian regime with the power to execute drug dealers?
No, thanks. I would rather live next door to a dope smoker than a authoritarian who would use the boot heel of government to crush the life out of people in order to “save society”.