Every major police department has a homicide section whose sole purpose is to investigate these events at considerable expense to the public coffers. Despite our failure to eliminate mayhem, nobody suggests that we should legalize murder. That theorem states that people tend to do things that feel good. Unfortunately, some of these pleasurable activities have harmful side effects for society at large. Proponents of legalizing drugs seldom mention that we've already tried that strategy.
History recounts that opium was brought to the American frontier by Chinese railroad laborers.
At the time, it was perfectly legal. Heroin enjoyed a brief popularity as an ingredient in cough syrups and elixirs. Not coincidentally, there were more heroin addicts in New York in 1900 than there were during the freewheeling Sixties. When LSD was introduced into the mainstream, cops were powerless to prevent its usage. All of these substances came to be outlawed because of the deleterious impact they had upon public order.