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> Criminal charges and prison are definitely unhealthy.

Making someting illegal does not mean you have to put people in prison. You do understand that we can forbid a drug and try to stop the sale of drugs, and still provide support for people who develop drug habits?

Funny that you mention cigarettes. I'm quite sure that cigarettes will be made illegal at some point in the future.

> Putting substances into your own body should not be illegal

Why is this so? By axiom?

Any parent will forcibly forbid her child to put any substance in his body. We make things illegal exactly because we recognize that a sufficiently large portion of the population is unable to handle a certain freedom. Now what exactly made you conclude that a sufficiently large percentage of the population can handle their use of drugs?

> The legal pot shop owners will eventually be CVS, Walgreens, etc.

I find your assuredness amazing. The truth of the matter is that nobody has the slightest idea how the legalization of cannabis is going to play out. The coming few years are going to be very interesting. Your prediction is that pot shops will end up on High Street. My prediction is that pot shops well end up in poor neighbourhoods.

If a few owners of a legal pot shops end up in a vats of acid, demand might return quickly. I'm not stating that this will happen, I'm just sceptical of the idea that criminal organizations will just quit and go home just because we legalize the sale of drug X.

I doubt Mexican drug cartels will suddenly become any nicer when confronted with competition from legal businesses. Whatever they are doing now, what's going to stop them from continuing to do it? Obviously not the police.

When people don't like the result of a study, the very existence of "causality" all of sudden turns into a point of contention.