You leave out the FACTS. They are accessible but unknown, they could be a bad product. They are expensive because of the cost to smuggle them. And they are illegal, which means you must become a criminal to purchase and use them. Legalize and there is no legal consequences in using them. They are cheaper, therefore more people can afford them. And they are safer, and no one will have to worry about getting a bad drug so they will feel no reason to not do them. Answer to me this. Why is alcohol and tobacco usage WAY beyond that of illegal drugs. Tell me.
Way back in 1919, there was a little ol' Amendment to the Constitution - Amendment XVIII - that gave the fedgov the right to pass laws forbidding any American from drinking alcohol. Sure enough, the Volstead Act passed and Prohibition had begun. A whole pantheon of moralists, some religious, some political "progressives" hailed Prohibition as the salvation of the republic.
Alas, it wasn't so.
Good old human nature got in the way -- despite the "legal consequences", people still wanted their alcoholic beverages, and went to great lengths to get them. Some made their own. Some imported it clandestinely. Others, who couldn't afford the aforementioned options, substituted dangerous concoctions made from poisons such as methanol - the main ingredient in antifreeze at the time. (The term "blind drunk" actually arose from these unfortunates: imbibing too much methanol had the unpleasant side effect of causing blindness to the drinker.)
It wasn't long before the majority of Americans realized just how absurd Prohibition was. The rapid rise of organized hoodlums who controlled the trade in illegal booze, the number of people jailed on Prohibition charges, the consequences of drinking poisonous substitutes became too much for Americans to take, and in a mere 14 years, Prohibition was consigned to history's dustbin. And after it was repealed, we did not become a nation of alcoholics; rather, after a slight uptick, alcohol use leveled off to the same level it was prior to Prohibition, but alcohol abuse declined dramatically.
I believe that "repealing" drug prohibition would have the same positive effect as the repeal of the XVIII Amendment.
Despite the rationalizations of the drug warriors, such positive effects happen today in places where the tactics of the WOD have been replaced by more saner approaches (such as Holland), and if given a chance, would no doubt work here as well. Certainly the cost to the taxpayers would be far less than the WOD, and the renewed respect for law-enforcement officers that would accrue when people view them as public servants instead of jack-booted thugs would be priceless.
Answer to me this. Why is alcohol and tobacco usage WAY beyond that of illegal drugs. Tell me.
Simple. Alcohol and tobacco use have always been higher than that of the "illegal" drugs, because they have always been used across a broad range of society. The "illegal" drugs usually had a "niche" market: e.g. in addition to its legitimate medical uses as part of the physician's pharmacopia, marijuana was commonly used by Mexican immigrants prior to its outlawing. BTW, the prohibitionist Harry Anslinger, who was the architect of marijuana prohibition, claimed in the hearings leading up to the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act that the evil weed made Mexican farm workers crazy enough to chase after and rape white women (A similar argument was pressed regarding cocaine and black men). So, racism is one of the roots of the War on Drugs. Nice, eh? Imagine the hue and cry if such an argument was raised today - we all know the results of that hypothetical Congressional testimony! :-)