No one believes it will solve all of society's ills, but it will certainly solve one very serious ill. It will solve the problem of spreading addiction to more innocent people.
Has it solved that problem to date?
Government cannot regulate morality...and PROHIBITION had to be repealed because it created a terrible black market for alcohol, that we still deal with today...it never got anyone to stop drinking, it only went underground and flourished. Marijuana is no different.
There is a big difference in Heroine and Cocaine addiction compared to Marijuana use. Of course hard core religious fanatics will object to that statement, but that is how it is. We have young criminals who got caught with a small amount of MJ and ended up being trained by the drug dealers in prison to become hard core dealers and ruined their lives.
There should be a balance in all things....not the force of compliance we see in ISLAM....that is what we had in the beginning of the War on Drugs....did it help? NO.
I do not do drugs, so don’t jump into that nonsense, I taught Criminal Justice so I know the statistics and what our history of the War on Drugs has taught us works and doesn’t work. Young lives ruined for no reason.
Greatly Ameliorated but not "solved." To "solve" the problem, we need to use tactics more like Singapore.
The fact that usage has been held down to 2% for over 100 years is evidence that it has been pretty successful so far. in China it took less than 70 years to reach 50% usage according to the Drug Library.org.