The biggest barrier IMO to a legal drug economy, with regulation and legitimate corporate players, is reversing years and years of learned stigma that "drugs are evil". And the incredibly irony here of the "please think of the children" mentality, is that it's reinforcing this feedback loop, and I don't see any way to break out of it.
The government can't legalise drugs because of the massive community backlash there would be. So the continued illegality, of the trade sees it linked to criminal activity on a macro scale (terrorist groups / bikies etc.) as well as at a local level (home invasions / thefts / pharma. raids etc.) not to mention the violence and the risk of overdose that prompts teary eyed parents to come on the news and espouse about the evils of drugs, leading to the (admittedly fairly compelling) conclusion that stamping out drugs would be a good thing. And that, of course, means the government can't legalise drugs because of the massive community backlash there would be...
Good luck with that. The evidence has been mounting up (and been pretty obvious) for years now, but nobody in Government is willing to climb down from their 'tough on crime' stance for long enough to do anything that's actually useful here.
Plenty of ex-officials, sometimes within days of their standing down, have sensible things to say, but until someone that's actually in a position of power gets their head out of their arse and does something about it.... yup, we're all still paying for a violent, pointless exercise that maximises the societal harm it allegedly seeks to mitigate.
I found this paper about drug policy change in Switzerland [1] very interesting.
The country was pushed toward evidence-based policies by a very large and visible drug scene, which had serious health consequences.
Some states started trying different approaches and fueled federal debates (The US system is similar to the swiss one). They did it even as far-right parties like SVP showed increased support, which caused almost schizophrenic results. For instance in 2008 "a resounding 68 percent of the population voted in favor of the new narcotics law based on four pillars, which included heroin-assisted therapy, while in the same referendum, only 33 percent endorsed decriminalization of cannabis"
Like you said, promoting legalization would be political suicide. Obama, Clinton, and Bush have all admitted drug use, yet all three have taken an extremely tough stance on drugs to protect their public image.
The US governments foreign policy is the main cause of the backwards drug policies around the world. Personally, I don't believe our government is progressive enough for this to change anytime soon.
Does the 270 Million worldwide drug users number seem a bit low to anyone else? I'm also wondering if that means "daily users" or "addicts" or "people convicted of a drug-related offense"?
A bit more detail further in the report:
"The UNODC estimates, conservatively, that between 155 and 270 million people worldwide, or 3.5% to 5.7% of 15-64-year¬olds, used illicit substances at least once in the last year. Global lifetime usage figures probably approach one billion"
Ah thanks, I only made it through the executive summary. The one billion figure seems more realistic if we're talking lifetime usage. I'd still expect that "once in the last year" number to be higher, though they do say that's a conservative estimate.
What about the millions of prescription drug users around the world (and especially in the US). The division between illicit and "legal" drugs is comical, the addiction and use of prescription opiates and "illegal" opiates is essentially the EXACT same thing.
The government can't legalise drugs because of the massive community backlash there would be. So the continued illegality, of the trade sees it linked to criminal activity on a macro scale (terrorist groups / bikies etc.) as well as at a local level (home invasions / thefts / pharma. raids etc.) not to mention the violence and the risk of overdose that prompts teary eyed parents to come on the news and espouse about the evils of drugs, leading to the (admittedly fairly compelling) conclusion that stamping out drugs would be a good thing. And that, of course, means the government can't legalise drugs because of the massive community backlash there would be...