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Police state tactics are happening and have little to do with “war on drugs”. Nobody supports SWAT team tactics to pick up a suburban small-time dealer.

But the idea that drugs should be legal should be a non-starter. It is asinine.

The real question is not “Should drugs be legalized”?

The real question is “Where does the government get the right to control them?”

Suppose someone’s fairy godmother flew over this country one night and waved her magic wand and eliminated all drug laws from the books.

Suppose also you live next-door to me.

You wake up the next morning look over the fence, and discover I’ve got a massive crop of marijuana, opium poppies and coca plants growing in my back yard.

Do you attempt to make me get rid of them?

If so, under what authority?

You'll have to show me the part of the constitution which permits the federal government to ban drugs. As regards the individual states, the powers granted to them by their governed vary, but generally they are limited to to acts of legislation which serve a compelling public interest. I will argue that even if the intent of such legislation is righteous, if it fails to serve that interest it should not stand. Such is the case with drug prohibition, the evidence being before us and the case being made with no doubt.

In most cases, drug use in and of itself harms only the user and it seems rather a waste of a governing body's time to legislate against an adult individual who wants to get spun up on dope and isn't causing harm to another person in the act. If I was the policing authority of a land I would pursue conduct in which one person harms or violates others. And while it is a certainty that such conduct can be a result of drug use, drug related crimes are more often the result of circumstances created by the criminalization of drug use.

If you want to make an argument to contrary, perhaps you can provide a review of the history of drug related crimes which occurred with any regularity before drug prohibition, and show how those types of crimes have been reduced as a result of prohibition.