“...experiment with legalization...”
LOL! Cannabis was legal for all of human history - until the Progressive Era. Some “experiment”.
And in most of human history, was there a subcomponent of the population that was drug addicted to the point where they could perform no useful work and became burdens on society? I think a lot of drug abuse laws must have come into being because society itself was changing. That would be because the factors in a relatively modern society that allow the existence of freeloaders who exist only to get high did not exist before industrialization.