That's one theory. Another is that I recognize the difference between "bad" and "worse", while you seem to be convinced that "worse" is actually "better."
No, Worse is worse. As bad as you *THINK* things are now, you would have us leap from the frying pan into the fire.
It is inescapable that what you favor, if extended to the deadly drug alcohol, would fail utterly and yet you cling to the notion that it will succeed with other drugs.
And here we go again with that utterly stupid and childish libertarian talking point "Alcohol." They had alcohol in China too, but it didn't f***ing wreck their nation. Opium did that. I don't think the Libertarians will ever shut up about alcohol compared to all other drugs until Reality drops an anvil on their heads.
It’s simply an absurd position with no basis in logic or experience.
More like you are conceptually incapable of grasping the logic. It's just beyond you.
To you, what is the lesson of prohibition?
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Alcohol prohibition. The Libertarians will tell you that all "prohibitions" are impossible because that is what they wish to believe, and that is the "lesson" that they want people to learn.
I think the proponents of alcohol prohibition made a lot of mistakes in pursuing their goals, and had they done things differently, they might actually have been successful at accomplishing them.
The foremost mistake they made was "too much and too fast." They also failed to reckon with the fact that Humanities relationship with alcohol is so old that our genes even evolved to process it.
Now i'm not in favor of Alcohol prohibition, but I can see how they might have succeeded had they pursued a different course of action than that which they pursued. A Course of action similar to this perhaps.
They are slowly choking smoking to death, and if they manage to succeed eventually, it will demonstrate that prohibition is indeed possible, it's success is just a manner of how you go about implementing it.