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?
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...
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.