[dood]

I don't think it is even authoritarianism, we've become stuck in a strange cycle - people think drug use needs to be treated criminally because that is what they've been told for decades, and politicians keep repeating the falsehood because that's what people expect to hear. Neither voters nor politicians are even thinking about it, both just react as they've been conditioned to by the other. It'll take something dramatic to break out of this bizarre self-perpetuating cycle.