Cute, Michael. But are you suggesting that street dope peddlars aren't a problem, or that crack ought to be legalized, regulated and sold by CVS? I'm as much in favor of the 2nd Amendment as I know you are, but you'd need an arsenal to protect you from the results of legalizing drugs. I would probably make an exception for marijuana (whose only serious negative effect seems to be to hinder coherent thought and cause people to vote for Democrats), but other than that, regulation won't work for drugs whose sole purpose is abuse. CVS sells narcotic-based drugs, but only those with demonstrable pharmaceutical value. Crack, on the other hand, is what's in demand on the street, and if you've seen what that stuff does to people, well, no amount of libertarian theorizing can excuse it.
Crack itself is a byproduct of the drug war. Compact, easy to smuggle, high profit margin, low cost to value ratio, etc. Much more economical than powder cocaine.
I think it's safe to say that if tobacco or coffee were banned, we'd be decrying the scourge of crack nicotine or crack caffeine.
We're already starting to see a violent criminal element get involved in cigarettes in states like NY and CA where the taxes are high enough to make smuggling extremely lucrative.
The problem people seem to have is that when it comes to drugs, any rational understanding of market forces, unintended consequences, and simple economics goes right out the window in the face of emotional appeals on behalf of people who made their own free choice to ingest the drug in the first place.
And besides, they can't even keep drugs out of prisons, where on-demand body cavity searches are de rigeur, so what makes you think that they'll ever be able to keep recreational drugs out of society as a whole? The word "police state" doesn't even begin to describe would would be necessary.
Posted a bit too soon.
Basically, Andy, I think that we have a much better chance of fixing the drug problem in the US if we stopped treating it like a criminal issue and started treating it like a public health issue, which is what it really is.