Dispelling more "War on" [some] "Drugs" [users] bullshit.

QFT.

Cancel the War and Fix the Wounded - Reason Magazine:

"...The reason you can’t buy narcotics over the counter, then, seems to have just as much to do with other people’s desire that you maximize your economic output as with their concern for your continued well-being by itself. Put another way, a big chunk of the concern about drug abuse arises not from altruistic paternalism (it’s for your own good) but from selfish paternalism (it’s for everyone else’s).

The third interesting thing is that even though the rationale for both forms of prohibition is essentially the same, and even though the costs of alcohol abuse are higher than those of drug abuse (true, the gap might shrink if drugs were decriminalized), America no longer forbids drinking. We tried that, for 13 years, and it didn’t work. It was, in fact, a disaster.

So the country switched from paternalism to altruism, in the genuine sense. We allow people to pursue their own good as they define it—not as someone else defines it for them. Society lets people drink as much as they want, so long as they don’t endanger others. Even if that means some of them don’t always come out of the chute at 110 miles an hour on Monday morning.

And it works. Most people don’t overindulge. Some do. Some of those develop a drinking problem. And when someone with a drinking problem needs help, we provide it.

So why not try the same approach with other drugs—starting with marijuana? After all: If prohibition reduced drug consumption, then the U.S. could have declared victory long ago. From 2002 to 2009, national drug-control funding rose 39 percent. Drug arrests exceeded 1 million a year—roughly half of those for pot, of which 9 in 10 busts were for simple possession. Yet the rate of illicit drug use rose—from 8.3 percent to 8.7 percent. Some victory."