[wfo]

The most recent two sitting US presidents used cocaine. They certainly wanted illicit drugs and drug use -- and harder drugs than marijuana, which an overwhelming majority of Americans have tried -- in their communities at some point in their lives though they may or may not want that now. I think your statement is very, very far from correct (even if you don't include the enormous proportion of Americans who illegally abuse prescription drugs which are generally much 'harder' than the drugs you get on the street) and just the wishful thinking of a small number of social conservatives for whom drugs have been turned into a convenient bogeyman to blame when anything in society goes wrong.

[rayiner]

As I said, I'm not talking about marijuana. The vast majority (75-85%) of Mexican drug cartel revenues come from other sources: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/22/how-can-mari....

And I think you're delusional about the "small number of social conservatives" who think drugs are a problem. Support for keeping drugs like cocaine and heroin illegal ranges from 80-90%: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/drug-legalization-p.... Marijuana is the only one that a slim majority think shouldn't be legal.

Also, most people do not try drugs harder than marijuana at any point: http://archive.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2012SummNatFindDetTable.... 70% of people never try an illicit drug other than marijuana, and only 7.5% report using an illicit drug other than marijuana in the past year.

And even if a substantial minority of people do try an illicit drug other than marijuana at some point, what does that mean? 13% of surveyed Americans reported driving drunk in the past year (double the percentage that report doing any non-marijuana illicit drug in the past year): http://www.fairwarning.org/2010/12/more-than-30-million-amer.... How many of them do you think nonetheless believe drunk driving should be illegal? Does the fact that a minority of people engage in conduct that may be hypocritical negate the sentiments of the majority?

[wfo]

I think you're excluding the abuse of prescription drugs (and for that matter alcohol) in your assessment with the 70% and 7.5% numbers, which are very important -- they are the drugs which haven't been the victims of a concerted and well-funded aggressive propaganda campaign by social conservatives spanning many years to demonize the drugs.

I think your point about drinking and driving isn't quite accurate: I think if you refine your definition of drinking and driving in both survey results about actions and survey results about laws you may find different results: many people have drank a couple of beers before driving home; fewer have driven blackout drunk. Most agree the latter should be illegal, but the first? A more appropriate analogy would be, instead of suggesting we ban drunk driving (a universally laudable goal to ban not a substance but a particular misuse of it), how many Americans do you think would say alcohol should be illegal? I'd say on the order of zero.

You need to understand survey results in the context of the previously mentioned propaganda campaign: people don't quite exactly say what they really believe in the face of this, they say what they have been conditioned to believe in some sense. We need to look at their actual actions and provide context for the responses from them in terms of what they do. If someone really believes marijuana should be illegal, they won't try it or use it. Similarly with the harder drugs. We are slowly undoing the damage that has been done to this country with the anti-drug campaigns but it takes time; marijuana is the beginning. It's not really fair to say Americans are actually anti-drug after such an effective brainwashing session.

Also all of your points are based on survey results: and when it comes to drugs what people say they do or want and what they actually do or want are quite distinct. I don't think relying on them is reasonable: instead to get some accurate proportion we'd need to look at the drugs coming in and do some calculus based on how they are distributed among the population.