USA creeps towards leglisation during presidential vote

Several US states have voted to decriminalise drugs in referenda taken during the 2020 presidential election. 

In a historic first, Oregon voted to decriminalise all illegal drugs...

Meanwhile, in other parts of the US, voters backed the decriminalisation of recreational marijuana: in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota.

That takes the tally of states where recreational weed is allowed up to 15.

Back in slow-moving Australia, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019 showed that more people supported legalisation (41%) than opposed it (37%).

And a referendum on legalising cannabis in New Zealand was lost even as an assisted dying bill passed and Jacinda Ardern was returned with her own majority. No doubt the No case was run by the usual self-interest groups – The alcohol industry, pharmaceutical groups and the police.  

But they are on the wrong side of history.

One by one the false tropes of prohibition are falling. Prohibitionists always assert that steps toward legalisation would lead to mass abuse of drugs like cannabis. However the Household drug use survey says otherwise –

Interestingly, if cannabis were legal, 78% of surveyed Australians said they would not use it. Only 3% said they would increase their use.
Moreover prohibition has not reduced drug use between 2016 and 2019, rather it is increasing –
This includes the proportion of Australians who used cannabis (up from 10.4% to 11.6%), cocaine (2.5% to 4.2%), ecstasy (2.2% to 3.0%) and ketamine (0.4% to 0.9%).

It's astounding that our democratic country also continues to tolerate mass murder in the Philippines in the name of the War on Drugs, with Amnesty International conservatively estimating that 8.000 people have been murdered without a trial, and even some priests who spoke out about the carnage have themselves been assassinated. Prohibition does way more harm than the drugs it fails to control!