It is apparent you are working with some false assumptions. In 1992, 132,000 people died as a result of alcohol/drug abuse. I don't think that constitutes a “few” fellow citizens being victims of drug and alcohol abuse. Some of those 132,000 may have been victims of their own indulgence; however, I willing to wager that the majority of them were innocent victims killed in accidents or as the result of violence commited upon them.
In 1995, the economic costs to our country of alcohol and drug abuse were over $300 billion. After you've read the analysis at the link above, please justify why legalization of marijuana constitutes good public policy. I submit you won't because you can't.
On a quick perusal, I note that something like 80% of those deaths are solely attributable to alcohol and it’s ill effects and on the drug side the remaining numbers seem to indicate that no physiologically detrimental efects attributable to marijuana are responsible (i.e. nearly all are attributable to either OD of harder substances or disease/violence associated with trade). Overall the vast majority of “attributable deaths” are related to disease associated with the substances.
Give the mortality figures, I’d be willing to bet offhand that legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana would result in a decrease in “drug related” deaths due to a drop in the financially incentivized homicide associated with it’s trade (though that could remain close to the same due to dealers at levels high enough to be willing to commit violence in its furtherance probably traffic in multiple substances).
If you at the least decriminalized pot, you’d probably lop off 10% of the annual “cost” of drug and alcohol abuse cost from the decline in tied up courts and law enforcement resources. Granted, you’d take an economic hit on that side too from the job and siezure losses...
But that brings us to the point of nitpicking over these numbers too, and you can’t put a price on freedom. There’s a demonstrable number of innocent people killed in mal-enforcement in addition to the numbers of people terrorized or inconvienienced by enforcement. If I’m doing emotionless number crunching, I’ll take (to paraphrase the death penalty debate) 100 idiots killing themselves from free drug use over one blown away in a wrong address no-knock raid.