ROFLOL!! By legalizing addictive drugs and ensuring unfettered public access TO those drugs, you will increase the number of addicts...which in turn INCREASES DEMAND...which allows the SUPPLIER to RAISE PRICES to WHATEVER THE MARKET WILL BEAR.
This is why there is PROFIT in selling legal things. Increased demand = higher prices. DECREASED demand, and/or INCREASED PRODUCTION (usually by a competitor, who gluts the market) DECREAS PRICES. If the product is in high demand and it's market value has lowered due to market glut, the price drop is TEMPORARY.
Once you control the market production of a super high-demand product, you can glut the market to discourage competitors....then simply create an artificial shortage in order to raise those prices back up and increase your own profit (uncontested by competitors) profit.
Don't give me the tired libertarian "alcohol and cigarrettes are legal" argument. Al Qaeda sells opuim, which is a heckuva lot more addictive and distructive than either of them.
By legalizing addictive drugs and ensuring unfettered public access TO those drugs, you will increase the number of addicts...which in turn INCREASES DEMAND...
You are either intentionally or unintentionally equating unrestricted legalization with the controlled legitimization that most anti-WOD advocates support. In fact, legalization failed miserably in Switzerland, when it was tried a decade or so ago (re: Needle Park). But, their most recent drug policy has been a resounding success. Sure, there are still many people on drugs there. But, that number is going slowly, but steadily down. Drug related violence has all but ended. And, because only those who already have an addiction (easily proved) can enter the program and drugs are no longer available on the streets, there are virtually no new addicts. Attrition will eventually reduce the number of addicts to close to zero. (It's not reasonable to expect it to be completely eliminated, since there will always be a few real idiots out there what will defy logic.)
I'm not saying that the Swiss program would work, unmodified, in the US. In fact, it might not work at all in the US. But, we won't know until we try. The one thing that is absolutely certain in this equation, is that continuing to do the same things that have done nothing but drive up the cost and profits of drug dealing for two decades, is a fools errand.
Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Although the hard drugs, like heroin, are indeed much more addictive than cigarettes, cigarettes kill many times more people than all of the so-called hard drugs combined. In fact, most drug related deaths are not from an overdose, but rather from tainted drugs. If legitimization did nothing else, it would significantly reduce drug related deaths.
Links to the source of all of the facts that I quoted here can be found in the article "The War on Drugs - Solution or Problem?"
Disclaimer: The above linked three-part article contains links to much factual data. If you happen to be a bushbot, you should avoid reading the above linked article. After all, bushbots don't want to be confused by the facts.