But your other question is interesting. I think it is an idea worth exploring and experimenting with, if only because the current ways of dealing with this don't really seem to be working. But what I would prefer even more is massive investment in medical sciences around research in addiction/drug use, and developing a somewhat more scientific approach to dependency problems than something like AA, which seems like religious horseshit. Instead of using all those resources to put people through the criminal justice system, if only we could use those resources for treatment and research....
Fair enough but the scale from buzzed to antisocial is vastly shorter on heroin than alcohol. From my observations of others, the desired pleasurable dose of heroin takes you out of the conversation pretty much immediately. Thankfully I've never chased that dragon...
Of course that doesn't cover the other dangerous ones, like crack and meth (dangerous primarily for their potency), or the less dangerous ones like all (most) of the psychedelics.
Even though I've been internally debating it for ~20 years - I'm still not sure where I fall on the debate. Certainly our current policies are far too draconian for substances that we can show demonstrably to be less dangerous than drugs available legally, but where do you reasonably draw the line?
What does a real world, all-drugs-are-legal marketplace look like?