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Because there's a large infrastructure dedicated to exactly that, from law enforcement officers to prosecutors and judges to storage to politicians.

Just getting 3 Strikes laws undone would be practically impossible. Any politician proposing it would immediately come under attack by an opponent who would gladly pick up that rock. Political courage is uncommon enough to be an oxymoron.

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Where I live 3 strikes doesn't apply unless the first two are violent crimes, so a change in the drug laws won't affect the number of those people incarcerated. People who have already been convicted of two violent crimes and are now charged with a third felony are slow learners that probably belong in jail for 25 years.

But there are a whole lot of people in the pen for selling relatively small amounts of drugs. I don't see the government passing new laws to replace them if drug laws were repealed.

A lot of the violent crimes are drug related.

Sure, I expect violent crime to go down. But the point was the repeal of thee "strikes laws" probably won't change much. Even without three strikes you're not going to get much leniency from a judge on your third felony.

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