You say its working far better than the alternative. Please describe in some detail the direct experience and the time you spent living where drugs are not a crime to use. Tell me how many years you spent in that environment and the level of violence committed by individuals who didn’t need to violate the law to buy, possess or use drugs.
Anecdotal experiences are not a good basis for an argument; challenging me to produce anecdotal experiences to support a point that should be made by analysis of human behavior is ridiculous.
I think what you don't get is that when individuals are so impaired by drug abuse that they can no longer hold a job or otherwise function productively, their addiction does not disappear just because they do not have an income stream. This is completely independent of the legality of obtaining, possessing, or using drugs. When they become so impaired, and their only thought is how to get their next fix, they *will* turn to criminal means to obtain the money to buy the drugs, because drug pushers--whether legal or not--don't give away drugs for free.
There actually is not a place--at least in the developed world--where drug abuse is legal and tolerated. Given that the 19th century was fairly tolerant of drug use, and that places like opium dens were fairly common (at least in historical descriptions of the time)--there must be a compelling reason why drugs were made illegal and drug possession even carries the death penalty in some countries. (There are, right now, two Australians sentenced to death in Indonesia for smuggling drugs.) I do not think it's because of some puritanical wave that swept the world--it's probably because people saw the damage caused by drug addiction, and wanted to stop it.
There is also the fact that drug trafficking is big money--do you seriously think the drug cartels are going to go out of business if drugs are legalized, and they can *legally* entice more people into addiction, thus increasing their customer base?