That's not reasonable at all. Forensic science and surveillance technology has made gigantic bounds in the past 50 years, as has almost every other aspect of crime fighting. We've busted mafias, dispersed organized crime syndicates (you know, the REAL bad guys) and made education more widespread than ever. It's gotten a lot harder to do serious IRL crime undetected (cyber crime is a whole other story). Giving a bunch of young latinos and african americans horrible mandatory minimums in lieu of addiction treatment has very arguably contributed to slowing down the decrease in violent crimes.

The only reason that drugs cost enormous amounts of money is that they're illegal.

Once they're legal they could be produced for virtually nothing, and no one would have to turn to crime to afford them.

In an enlightened-enough state, the government could even subsidize drugs for those that couldn't afford them. For therapeutic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA it's probably going to happen before long, though I'm not holding my breath for it happening in the US for cocaine or heroin within my lifetime. But they still don't have to be expensive, once they're legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis#....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5703470/

Carfentanil which has a lethal dose that's so small it's hard to notice or see?

I understand legalizing somethings we don't necessarily even like to put up with, but if something is as lethal as a gun I'm pretty comfortable infringing a bit on some freedoms.

The question to me books down to what addicts do if the drug remains illegal. Getting all drug users over onto a legal supply matters. Doesn't need to be easy - prescriptions etc. for the worst ones would be reasonable.

But getting them onto a legal, regulated supply from providers that can nudge them towards treatment or safer alternatives is even more important for the highest risk drugs.