Another argument is that legalisation would cut the huge costs of enforcement, prosecution, and imprisonment. Finally, many of the adverse health effects of drugs stem from criminalisation rather than from the drugs themselves. Although the arguments for legalisation can be expressed forcefully, almost nobody argues for a free, legal, unregulated market for all drugs, and clearly no single policy will cover all drugs. The key question is how the world would look if drugs were legal. Others - for instance, economist Richard Stevenson have tried to describe a world where large companies produce, distribute, and advertise drugs like heroin and cocaine and invest heavily in research designed to produce drugs that will satisfy customers' wants while making them safer.
Much more work needs to be done on envisaging a world that includes some legalisation of drugs.
But it's clear that purely prohibitionist policies don't work and make the problems of drug abuse worse. Governments worldwide have followed illogical and often counterproductive drug policies, primarily because drug use is seen in moral terms. Policies that allow some decriminalisation and legalisation are much more likely than prohibition to succeed in achieving everybody's aim of minimising the harm from drug abuse. The morality of drug controls. Interdepartemental Working Group.