Easy to say, but it'll never happen, especially in the US (at least not in my lifetime, hopefully my daughters). Too many jobs would be unnecessary if the "war on drugs" was over.
We had far more invested in prohibition, with far more outright corruption (politicians on the take from bootleggers), but managed to end that somehow. The difference was that alcohol consumption was mainstream so ordinary voters cared about the impact of prohibition. Drug consumption is not mainstream and enforcement largely affects minorities, so ordinary voters don't care.
This is a must-see documentary, not just for its coverage of prohibition, but for the historical insights you can glean about American politics: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition.
In a nutshell, prohibition was far more invasive and far more corrupt than today's drug war. Al Capone was a billionaire in today's money, and the drug lords of yore were willing to exert political influence in a way that maybe happens today in Mexico, but certainly does not in the U.S. Al Capone once walked into City Hall and pushed the Mayor of Cicero (which was a former independent city in the Chicago area) down the stairs and nobody touched him. Politicians and police were openly on the take from bootleggers in a way that is totally foreign to our modern sensibilities (unless you have any familiarity with the developing world).
Not really, whilst you'd lose some in enforcement you'd still need to police for blackmarket knock off product. You'd also create jobs in administrating the sales, production and supply chain etc.
The DEA has a budget of nearly $3BN. I doubt that money would go to the same types of jobs or companies if Bayer and Pfizer and others were licensed to sell Morphine and Amphetamines to the public. Seems like the FDA might get some more work, there'd be a bit larger need for customs inspections. But enforcement would go way down, especially without diversion control.
How much money and weapons are used in protecting bootlegged alcohol these days?
Yep. But that may be understanding the case. If you're part of the anti-drug-war-industrial-complex, the worse thing in the world would be for enforcement to "go way down."
Look at state and local cops, federal prison guards and the BOP, state and local prison guards, federal prosecutors, state and local prosecutors, privately owned prisons operated under contract, government employee unions, state and local police departments receiving billions in tax dollars via "drug war" grants and gear from FedGov, companies manufacturing battering rams for those 4am no-knock SWAT drug raids, etc. Let's not forget the U.S. military and border police.
True. I can't remember the exact details but when a leading UK government advisor on drugs advised changes to the governments ridiculous classification of drugs and favoured one based on evidence of the harm they cause he was fired "because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy"[1] Governments aren't willing to be forward thinking or even rational on the issue.