I have always been in favor of legalization of drugs since I left primary school and started experimenting with small amounts of cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine, lsd and xtc, as well as the two legally available substances tobacco and alcohol. My first experiences with these said substances was generally favorable except it took many more years to become a heavy smoker. It wasnt until I left university and was unable to find any suitable work that I really started to become a heavy smoker, and not just a casual thing. Often times I think to myself if the cannabis had been more freely available at the time then I would have relied less heavily on tobacco as a substance to use frequently because the herb chills me out. Paradoxically, I managed to quit smoking 3 years ago after a really hard withdrawal from fentanyl which almost killed me (I almost choked on my own vomit). I have never had a serious alcohol addiction although I went through a phase of homebrewing where I used to drink regularly every night and was quite dependent on it.
The fact that illegal drugs grow naturally whereas some are semi-synthetic (lsd, meth, xtc, RTI-31) means that they are a part of our culture. You could argue that rapists and murderers, pedophiles etc are a part of our society but drugs are a different ball game. If someone is suffering from an addiction they need to go and find some sort of therapy/treatment programme etc. Locking people up is very expensive (I think), and if all that is done is to punish these people they might end up with some serious grudge against society. The extent to which this is felt by the 'offending' party would depend on the level of guilt that they feel over their actions.
The reason why most drugs are illegal is that the bulk of society wants nothing to do with these substances and genuinely wants to wash their hands of the stuff.
