You do have to admit though, that there will be some real societal costs to allowing more addicts to get an easy fix. I don’t believe for one minute that drug decriminalization (let alone legalization) will benefit society and outweigh the social costs of said policy.
I’m willing to be proven wrong on this point, but I have my doubts that free flowing drugs of all sort will provide a better socioeconomic trend overall.
No doubt the war on drugs has had a lot of negative unintended consequences and seems to enrich all the wrong people. I don’t know what the answer is, but more zombies doesn’t seem to be the trend we need.
In a free society, the liberties of individual adults take precedence over collectivist criteria like the socioeconomic trend. If Joe wants to make himself unproductive (and accept the consequences) with alcohol, or other drugs, or staying up until the wee hours every night playing Minecraft - his productivity belongs to him and not to the collective.
“I’m willing to be proven wrong on this point, “
as am I. Therefore, remove all federal laws related to the WOD and let the states pursue different courses of action to see what works. That was the American system. It was brilliant.