It would be worth surprisingly little if not for prohibition. Pure heroin can be bought wholesale for just $0.80/gram in Afghanistan. That same gram gets marked up all the way to $125 (or more) once it finally reaches the Western consumer. Prohibition is the one and only reason why anyone has ever had to steal, scam or sell their body to strange men to support a heroin habit. Prohibition only succeeds in creating crime and misery.
Allow me to rephrase it. How does the cost of Afgan war compare to the profits from distributing the opium produce? According to former British drug tzar (who was fired for his stance on ranking drugs according to observed harm and not according to folclore) heroin is still a mighty powerful addictive drug but very few other "controlled substances" rate above alcohol http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6474053.stm (Class A, B, C or Unclassified is how HM Government rated drugs a couple years back.)
That closes the loop around all the political questions... I'm concerned about survival in a worst case economic scenario... we have Mexican Drug Cartels working their way into the border states. What if we do all the survival things like get some farmland and all that but the Cartel comes along and wants your food, women, etc... it sucks that we created this insanity... there is a lot of insanity that we create like the War on Poverty which just entraps people in crime-ridden ghettos with the War on Drugs fueling all the crime the culture can handle and then some... Weed is said to be about $50 Billion a year and dwarfing all the other stuff.. we should be able to tax it and get $25 Billion you'd think and save some tens or hundreds of Billions in law enforcement costs...
But what about the prohibition enforcement thugs who totally get off on bullying innocent people and making them suffer? What about <i>their</i> needs? What about <i>their</i> emotional well-being? Think of the thugs!
The narcotics biz is so huge, if we legalized it all tomorrow, some narcotic producing countries economies' would just die by tomorrow night...and banks might have a hard time cashing paychecks. Thats how much drug $$ runs thru the global economic system. Marijuana is the #1 cash crop in the US. Literally.
1% is small percentage but in terms say THREE MILLION PEOPLE that is an entire city of coke heads. and 1% of the general poplution...the age of most drug addicts is between 18-45...most drug die of overdose .my estimated. 10% of the population between ages 18-45 are addicted narcotics. that is just coke..what about pot,meth etc it's like 5% of the population do illegal drugs. i 50% of californians voted yes to legalization..so why is it illegal??? how can something be illegal if 50% of the population don't agree it's illegal. 100% agree certain things like stealing fraud is illegal...the reason for my post is that my estimate NARCOTICS industry is like 10% of the economy if you inlude whisky. and if yo include prison and policing cost it's like 15% of the economy...drug economy. that is something the gov't should seriously look at. how many of the people on welfare are selling drugs for cash? also when drug dealers are in jail for drug charges it cost the legal system money and prison etc plus they are not paying taxes. if they were in a normal job that pays taxes.. people in prison don't pay taxes. it the essence of the democracy that laws can be change via a vote..majority rules. in a dictatorship all these drug dealers or drug users would be killed. another reason a democracy is better than a dictatorship or ruled by few interest groups ...righ wing religious guys would mostly likley object to legalization cause it's 'immoral' and that it would increase drug use when the opposite would happen drug use would decline from legalization. and less costly for the gov't portugal is living proof.
If you legalised coke, it would still be produced in South America. They have the right climate to grow it and cheap labour. And it would end of a lot of bloodshed in those countries.