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When smoking became more socially unacceptable, the number of smokers declined.

From article: "Drug Legalization: Myths vs. Reality"

About 110 million Americans use alcohol; about 60 million smoke; by contrast, 14 million use drugs. Illegal drugs, however, are much more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. While 10 percent of alcohol users consume to excess, 50 percent of marijuana users suffer from excessive use of the drug, as do 90 percent of cocaine users, and 95 percent of those using opiates.

Drug use is not victimless. Not only do individuals commit crimes under drug influence, but drug users are involved in 10 percent to 15 percent of highway fatalities, are two to three times more likely to be involved in workplace accidents (injuring others as well as themselves), and give birth to 100,000 cocaine addicted infants each year.

If drug legalization works at all, it works by lowering prices - "taking the profit out of drugs" as proponents of legalization put it. Lowering the price, however, surely would lead to increased demand. After prohibition, alcohol consumption increased 50 percent. In Britain, where addicts get heroin from the government, the number of "registered" addicts has risen from 2,800 in 1980 to 80,000 today. Thus, both economic theory and actual experience strongly suggest drug legalization would increase drug use.

Drugs have not always been part of American society. Most Americans today can remember a time when drugs were not in the workplace or discussed casually on television, and when schools were free of drugs. The explosion of drug use during the 1960s and 1970s was the result of a misguided acceptance of drugs and the defacto legalization policies of the time.

It is possible to make America drug-free'. Drug use already has fallen by more than a third since 1985. Drug use among 18- to 25-year-olds is down 53 percent for marijuana and 52 percent for cocaine since 1977. This is hardly the time to run up the white flag.

Negative externalities, including unintended consequences, should be considered. It's important to think about other people, including children.

it looks like legalizing gambling, and taxing it, caused an explosion in gambling. Also, gangsters were involved in gambling even after it was legalized.

Gambling became legal in 1931. I wonder if it remained illegal, would there be more or less gambling today? (I doubt Las Vegas would be the same).

Also, if there wasn't a minimum wage, labor standards, or a government safety net, would the U.S. be more like China, where many workers have to work for $0.25 an hour, to survive, while profits rise much more than wages, which keeps consumption low.