You’re talking about feeding a welfare system from druggies that will be FAR more than enforcement losses.
Am I? Because it seems to me we already have a massive welfare investment in drug rehabilitate and/or prevention. This includes programs tangled up with the criminal justice system, and also in basically every institution recognized as legitimate in our society. Like I said, anyone who wants to use drugs now can, and though I could see habitual drug use grow with legalization (though you never know, drinking went up under prohibition), I doubt services would ne strained by extra lost souls to compensate for the continental vastness of the cost of the War on Drugs.
Also, I know people like you envision everyone who is now deterred by drug laws turning into junkies that can’t support themselves after decriminization. But I don’t see why they have to explode, even if casual use does. We already gave enough junkies with the Drug War, as well as, and perhaps more significantly, more abusers of the legal alchohol and prescription drugs.
Anyway, the solution is to leave them to their own devices. Personal responsibility has its own controls, as does non-legal social control. If all else fails nature has its awful price. I understand the argument that it’s dangerous with thep preexistence of the Welfare State. Lord knows government needs no further excuses for expansion. I feel the same way about immigration. Open borders would be fine without welfare.
But I don’t like legislating out of base fear. We shouldn’t let the Nanny State force us to spend sums of Asian proportions on obviously failing crusades.