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I think you are missing the point some of the responders are trying to make. They aren't saying legalize any behavior people under the influence of drugs might get involved in. Just because alcohol is legal, we don't allow people to drive drunk, show up to work that way, or use it as a legal defense for any activity they are involved in.

These respondents are attempting to illustrate that just as the repealing the Eighteenth Amendment brought the alcohol related gangs to an end, such a change in our drug policy would strike a crushing blow to the drug gangs. It didn't just end the booze running gangs, it ended the smuggling that was taking place across the Canadian border. And the Twenty-first Amendment didn't make alcohol legal. It was one of the most republican amendments in that it gave states the sole right to make that determination. States in turn gave the sole right to local communities to regulate by way of determining if they wanted licensed distribution establishments within their communities. Like it or not, it is one of the best examples of a republican form of government from the last century, and it works.

As a person that won't use illegal drugs, and won't associate with people that do, I see applying the law that ended prohibition to natural drugs as making a lot of sense. Outlaw all manufactured drugs like meth, but slap strict controls over the growing, preparation and distribution of drugs derived from natural sources. Put the power of enforcement back in the hands of local communities where it has always served best.

I appreciate what you are trying to say too. I have maybe two drinks of alcohol a year, and could easily do without alcohol all together. I can't stand drunks, especially beer drinkers, followed closely by wine drinkers, but I am glad I live in our society of today where the gang violence that once surrounded alcohol is nonexistent. Make no mistake though, I will never accept any outrageous behavior of drunkenness, not even among family members, simply because alcohol is legal.

I think then perhaps you are missing my point as well.

Because we have to deal with one problem in society with alcohol, we don't need more of them released into society with pot or other drugs.
Alcohol abuse often is connected to what is illegal in the law.

You shouldn't assume that because we can all point to the problems with alcohol, that we should also therefore be able to release drugs, bestiality, pedophilia, prostitution of any other vice into legal society as normal.

The worst thing you can do is to remove the stigma of the illegal drugs and their users.

Right now you have the Vietnam vets and hippies of the 60's that got hooked into drugs like pot. They are getting older and starting to die now.
As that generation dies, there will be an improvement in the culture in that there will be less of an open lust for drugs politically IMO.