Why not legalize?

A very smart post on legalizing drugs:

Ethan points out that alcohol and nicotine do more damage than most of the illicit drugs. He could have stated that more strongly: alcohol alone does more damage than all illicit drugs combined. I can't figure out why that counts as an argument for legalization; if the drug we legalized does more harm than the drugs we still prohibit, doesn't that suggest that legalization tends to increase harm by increasing the number of problem drug users?

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Both the drug warriors pursuing their fantasy of a drug-free society (not including their favorite drug, alcohol) and the legalization agitators imagine that there's a simple way out of this mess. There isn't. There are many useful things to do, but none of them fits on a bumper sticker

As I've said here before, anyone who suggests that legalization or better enforcement will solve (or dramatically improve) our drug problem is dishonest or deluded. While our current policy provides the worst of all worlds, which alternative policy to pursue comes down to which problems we want to live with.