Much of the best art in the world is created under the influence of drugs. Our #1 power might be the military, but only because it is funded. The profits need to come from somewhere and we consume far more than we create. Hence the importance of exporting culture and art.

I used a good bit of drugs for a while. It was not because I wanted drugs so much as that I didn't care if I died so long as it looked accidental. By legalizing drugs you pull that stigma away from it and make drug usage less appealing to many.

Drug prices are somewhat inelastic. The higher you drive costs of illegal drugs by increasing risk at the street level the more layers of protection a kingpen can afford and more profits you give kingpens to bribe people if they ever get caught.

Ignoring the social effects and direct and inderect costs of fighting the war on drugs that whole war on drugs B/S also funds the other side of the B/S war on terrorism.

I am not very eloquent, but the A VC blog pointed me at these links:

The Failure of the War on Drugs
The War on Drugs
Response on Legalizing Drugs
The War on Drugs

Some good quotes from the articles:

The political source of the war on drugs is mysterious if, as I am inclined to believe, there is a legal substitute for every one of the illegal drugs: selective serotonin uptake reinhibitors (e.g., Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft) and other antidepressive drugs for cocaine, liquor and tranquillizers for heroin, cigarettes for marijuana, caffeine and steroids for “uppers.” Obviously these are not perfect substitutes; and some of the illegal drugs may be more potent or addictive or physically or psychologically injurious than the legal ones. But it is apparent that our society has no general policy against the consumption of mind-altering substances, and there seems to be a certain arbitrariness in the choice of the subset to prohibit.

Change is internal unless you are a close minded bully, in which case for some reason you think you can make others do whatever you want them to, but of course that really isn't what freedom is all about is it?