No way is ethanol more destructive than opiates or meth.
Iran already has a de facto open market for opium and its kin. The stuff is dirt street cheap, the fields are close by. Result: massive addiction wildly beyond anything seen in the West.
Opium addiction destroyed the economic base of China after the Opium Wars.
Instead the solution is term limits for drug lords. Put bounties on their heads and let the mercs earn their keep. Back in the day of Bonnie & Clyde it took the G-men a while but they finally figured it out: it takes a crook to get a crook.
Research needs to go into opiate blockers that can be subcutaneously inserted into addicts for a timed release effect. If withdrawal symptoms can be thwarted, and mega-doses of vitamin C seem to do the trick, then there is a way forward to kill retail demand.
Hopefully a new generation of anti-anxiety medication will further shrink retail demand for opiates.
In the meantime Cannabis needs to be released to the market in a branded form with controls on potency. Taxed much in the manner of tobacco, it would join it in the market place of sin products that are tolerated. Untaxed and privately marketed cannabis would be pursued by the ATF not the DEA: failure to pay excise taxes. And while, in the manner of moonshine, small grow-opts will persist RJR et. al. will drive them into dust. Even with taxes, retail prices would collapse.
Very cheap cannabis would ruin the market for most other competing play pharma. The price spread to party would be too drastic.
As for cocaine further research is needed into fungal pests so as to reduce crop yields and ruin the economics of the business. The goal would be a perpetual crop pest that blights the crop and stays resident ever ready to re-infect.
Such a fungus is already to hand for the opium poppy. It is only a matter of political will to spread it on the winds of Afghanistan.
Research is needed on finding a drug replacement for meth that does not destroy the mind. As it stands, meth is a woman’s drug since it drops weight and unleashes her libido. You can recognize the impact in many a porn flick: the performer shows a ravenous appetite yet evidences deflating breasts on an otherwise healthy 20 year old body. Because of these effects, meth has relentless demand. It also permanently damages the brain — as in really forever. Hence there can be no acceptance of the legalization of this brutal drug.
In sum: legalize the least injurious stuff, block the really dangerous stuff with bounty tactics, research like crazy to halt addition and ease withdrawals. Waive penalties for addicts that turn themselves in for treatment — and increase spending on victim recovery drastically. To not spend money on recovery in the amounts needed is absolute folly.
A special category of crime should be established: anyone hooking a victim on Class I drugs gets five years above and beyond. Like using a gun in a robbery, the specific act of introducing a Class I drug to a newbie has to be specifically sanctioned.
