I am not sure that legalizing drugs would solve things. I say this based on a few anecdotal experiences. First I would say there are two types of drug addicts: recreational and habitual. Its not a clear cut division but its a division that has some merit. For instance I've noticed here in Toronto some university students are into coke, speed and other stimulants. Some of these guys are in law school, med. school etc, engineering etc... They take stimulants both to party but also because it helps to keep them awake when studying for exams etc... I'd say they fall into the recreational user group.
Now with habitual users some of them were recreational users who got hooked on these drugs they were taking recreationaly. Another group of habitual users are people who were prescribed opioid painkillers due to a health condition/ pain they had. The doctors got them hooked on this shit. They then turn to the black market when they are no longer prescribed these drugs or when the prescribed doses are no longer high enough. However, perhaps the largest group of habitual users are people who have serious mental health issues and/or trauma. They then turn to drugs as a way to self medicate. The issue here is that it becomes impossible to separate the mental health issues from the drug abuse issues.
I'm not sure legalization would help most habitual users as they would still be largely dysfunctional people who would still committ various property crimes to get money for their drug habits. You can see this with people who are alcoholics. They will either steal the alcohol itself or steal things to get money to buy alcohol. Not to mention all the other issues that come with addiction such as overdoses, health care etc... would still be there.
Those are the issues on the user side. Now when it comes to dealers the problems would likely remain. For instance I knew a guy who sold weed back in the 90s- when it was very much an illegal drug in Canada. He made a ton of money off it. He would mainly sell it to various professionals- who used it recreationally. He very much ran in like a business and these people also treated it like a business. For instance he told me they would not call him at odd hours and both seller and dealer kept a low profile. He never got arrested or even charged for a drug offense.
On the other hand a friend of mine works as a super in government housing buildings were people on welfare live. In 2015, at the building he was working at the time, there was a murder. A guy from another building came to buy weed off a guy who lived in his building. The buyer came to buy 10 grams of weed and the agreed upon price was $100. The buyer tried to buy the 10 grams with $90. The seller refused and got irate and the buyer was able to find a few extra loonies and quarters in his pocket. The total money he had on him, when emptying all his pockets, was $95. As a result the seller of the weed stabbed and killed him. This was over $5. He then dragged the guy's body into the building's stair case and left it there. Now, notwithstanding how terrible it is to murder someone over $5, what kind of a retard do you have to be to do something like this. Its definately not worth it to kill someone over $5 considering the penalty if you are caught and dumping a body in the stairway that is 20 feet from your door is idiotic. Whether legal or not this retard would act in the same way.
Another example, this same friend, currently works as a super at a harm reduction building. This is a building where all of the tenants are people who are on disability or on welfare and have addiction issues. Dealers frequent this building all the time. The slightly more capable addicts also work for these dealers selling their product. So the government basically created a drug haven at that building. A few days ago a crack dealer broke a guy's femur over money owed for crack. This occured in a hallway in the building and a security camera recorded the incident. So the dealer was arrested. Otherwise when these people are dealing and doing drugs in their apartments nothing is really done by cops due to a lack of "proof".
The jails in Toronto are flooded with gang members/drug dealers. A lot of them are Jamaicans and Somalians. They are in prison for serious crimes such as murder, mostly over drugs, however they are so broke that they cannot even buy snacks from the canteen. You can't fix this kind of stupid.
Your calculus does not account for economics. If decriminalized, drugs would become significantly cheaper. The main reason drugs are so expensive is because of the risk to almost everybody in the supply chain - risk of murder by rivals, or imprisonment.
We may find it distasteful to think of these people as such, but they are entrepreneurs who do their version of cost-benefit analysis. Drugs costing pennies on the dollar relative to where they were before will provide very little benefit to them. No more fast boats and cars, no more mansions, no more paying off government officials. Some will still be able to make money, but not like they're making now.
To be sure, it would take years for the economic changes to be realized by the general public. Consider the people in the US who were enriched by alcohol prohibition -
La Cosa Nostra in general, and the Joe Kennedy family in particular. Joe got rich boot-legging booze for the mafia, so rich that the parasites spawned from his loins are still reaping the benefits of what he did a century ago. Likewise with the mafia, they became much richer, much more powerful, than they ever would have been if booze had never been outlawed. What does present day California look like without all those rich Chicago mafiosos moving out there in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and influencing politics the way they did?
John Kennedy would probably never have been elected president, nor his brother appointed attorney general. Without the famous assassination of Bobby Kennedy, there is likely no gun control act of 1968. And thus likely no firearms owners protection act of 1986. No JFK as president would likely mean the filthy scumbag Lyndon B Johnson would never have been president, either. Then what does US involvement in Vietnam look like without that POS at the helm?
The last 2 paragraphs are speculation, of course, but it is still easy to see how the course of history would probably have been altered if we'd never had prohibition. To what? Who knows?
