Not sure why you think technology is outside the context of our society. This stuff isn't built by elves.
You're not solving the actual problem by going out and convincing society you're right (and you are, the Portuguese model shows that full decriminalization and even legalization lead to much better outcomes and no material increase in usage).
You're convincing people to deploy magic bean producing power wasters that just happen to let you buy drugs. It doesn't help mitigate or undo the harm foisted upon the millions in US prisons who got there because they wanted drugs. It doesn't help bring about the downfall of the cartels. If anything, it props those things up.
> Writing code collaboratively and convincing thousands of people to run nodes replicating your slow database is a social act -- I'd even call it a political act.
Yes, in and of itself it is.
The social act is deploying a slow database, which in turn provides technological workarounds to the actual social issues (like drug policy) that should be tackled head-on.