IOW, you believe that those who don't think like you do should be considered criminals.
Isn't that pretty much why prohibition didn't work?
Since the beginning of recorded time, people have used substances for the pursuit of happiness. They always will. It is very difficult for people to accept others telling them what to eat, drink, smoke, etc. It is human nature. If they outlawed eating meat, I imagine many people would find that difficult, and a rampant underground meat market would spring up overnight. They would become outlaws. When they outlaw tobacco (and they will) we will have even more outlaws.
By definition, the war on drugs can never be won. It would not only require that all current people cease using "drugs", but everyone born after today would also have to never use "drugs". That is the only way it could be "won". And as such, it never will be.
You cannot legislate human nature. And some people prefer pot over budweiser and marlboro's. Some people function better on opium, heroin, laudanum, or what haveyou and live long and productive lives while using it, including a large number of our founding fathers ... and 110 year old chinese opium addicts.
A great many of the artists and authors that are taught about in school were drug users. Most of the philopsophers that permeate textbooks used drugs. Almost every artist in your CD collection, were/are "drug" users, many of the most prominent folks in our history books were "drug" users, the father of modern psychiatry was a well-known cocaine addicts, heck, even our President is who he is today partly because of his own dabbling in "illegal drugs".
Face it, without illegal drugs, we wouldn't have forefathers, art, philopshy, and many other things, and the world would be a very boring place.
Like a hammer, or a baseball bat, drugs are just a tool. You can build a house, hit a homer, or whack someone over the head - but without hammers and baseball bats, the world just wouldn't be the same.
The "war on drugs" is a means of selective prosecution, revenue enhancement, and job creation. It can't be won, and therefore is a perpetual money machine. Heck, it's darn brilliant if you sit and think about it. I would have thought the hard part would be selling it to the American public, but courtesy of public schools, soccer-mom hysteria, and mass media brainwashing, they succeeded. They sold it, you bought it. Now we have wire-taps, "money laundering" (whatever that is) laws, civil forfeiture, the war on cash, know your customer profiling, no-knock warrants, "routine traffic stops", oh gee ... what am I forgetting.
And they have freedom loving, patriotic, limited-government "conservatives" cheering them on. Who'd have thunk it?
Well, I would have because history has shown that the public of a country is easily manipulated into all kinds of irrational things (German folks really didn't have anything against Jews prior to the 1930's).
"IOW, you believe that those who don't think like you do should be considered criminals."
No. You are free to have a different opinion and not think like me. You are free to express those opinions. But if you sell, possess, use or distribute illegal drugs then you are a criminal. That is a simple fact.
That is also the main focus of this debate. Some people believe that using drugs to get high is immoral but should not be illegal. Some do not see it as immoral and think it should be legalized. Some think it is immoral and think that the laws prohibiting these drugs are reasonable. I am in the last group.