Not all drugs are the same.
This is not relevant to whether or not they should be legal.
The prohibition on drug use is a moral issue. If we aren't free to cause deliberate harm to our own bodies, the one thing to which we can be sure we have a clear and unambiguous title, what else can we possibly own or control in life?
Sawing off my own hand with a circular saw is legal. Why isn't poisoning my own brain?
What about the evidence that it has done the opposite, by artifically inflating the price of drugs thereby enriching criminals, gangs, and cartels?
In Mexico, we have seen how this can lead to the cartels becoming more powerful than the government.
What makes you feel this way?
As a society we have to control all negative behaviours - including drug addicts that are willing to harm innocents in order to get their next fix.
We already have laws that criminalize violence and theft, and those apply just fine to drug users who engage in violence or theft.
The only possible use for drug laws that apply to all drug users, including ones that do not engage in the (again, already illegal) violence and theft is to criminalize nonviolent drug use.
That's morally unjustifiable.
If it was incredibly addictive and loved ones were dying (literally) to saw off their hands, then I'd want to make it illegal.
No, I don’t think tobacco and alcohol should be illegal. I do think addictively sawing off your hand should be illegal.
Why should addictively amputating your hand be illegal, but addictively killing yourself by destroying your lungs, heart, or liver not be illegal?
Alcohol kills about twice as many people as opioids.
So yeah, definitely a whole different ballpark.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...
Tobacco smoke is highly toxic to every tissue in your body.
So to be logically consistent, I'm sure you also think alcohol and tobacco should be illegal, right?
I won't disagree with that, but making drugs illegal doesn't curb use. The cost of getting arrested is less than the cost of breaking the addiction. So in essence, you get all that you described, plus a criminal record, legal costs, etc, which lead to no future, which leads to more drug use.
The fallacy is making something illegal actually prevents that thing, or even reduces it.
Vyvanse is basically amphetamine hooked to a protein that has to be metabolized before it has psychological effects, so lowers its abuse potential. I'm 100% in favor of amphetamine legalization, but we've got to be smart about it and not allow toxic forms of it to be available. Pure meth should not be legal, nor should pure fentanyl or cocaine(methylphenidate would be a good alternative with a better safety profile)