A poor person sells drug because it's the only way to make money. He doesn't make a lot of money out of it and any job would be better as he would get health care and pension on top of it. He would not also risk going to jail or die from a gunshot.
Now there's no more "illegal drugs" to sell.
What does this person do to make money? Remember there's no job for him/her and he somehow needs to eat to live.
I'm not saying the war on drug is fought properly, but between putting in jail all people who sell and/or consume drugs and let everyone do as they want there's probably stuff to be done.
Heroin was legal when first discovered, it was removed from the market because it's a lethal substance.
The "let everyone decide" doesn't work. Food education doesn't beat the commercial from Coca-Cola & the like. You would get the same problems with drugs, except drugs are not only lethal on the short term but somehow make you unproductive.
Then you're going to tell me "but we would regulate these drugs and they would have to comply to strict regulations". Boom. Crime opportunity.
My point is that legalizing some drugs wouldn't change the core of the problem.
Care to cite a couple of sources for that? I thought it was due to being highly addictive with few medicinal benefits.
Secondly, it will of course not solve all violence. But it will at least solve the assassinations (and the collateral damage that comes with it) that directly stem from doing business in a lawless world (there is no way to enforce contracts in the underground except by violence and reputation) and it will take away much of the necessity to commit petty crime by small time criminal junkies.
Depending on which country you look at, 20 to 60+ % of prison populations across the world are incarcerated for drug-related offenses. Are you honestly going to argue that all of those people will switch to robbing banks or other violent crimes when drugs are legalized? There are basically three ways to illegally make money nowadays: drugs, violent crimes (including property crimes which may not be 'violent' in the standard definition such as night-time burglary) and fraud (white collar but also smuggling cigarettes etc.) Many of the people who are now in the drug business will simply not have the opportunity to switch into a different field even if they wanted to!
And yes I did read Freakonomics, I don't know what your point is there. While an entertaining read, a quote from a single guy who may or may not be the 'drug lord' he's claiming hardly makes for a convincing argument to defend current drug policy on. It's quite obvious that 'solving' poverty (whatever that may mean, considering that 'poverty' is such an ill-defined concept) is a good way to eliminate crime. It's not something that can be reached with policy though, at least not in the near term. Drug policy is much more contained and within reach of the legislature (by definition even), if it weren't for all the people who oppose drugs on ideological and/or mis-informed factual grounds.