@sterlinluxan well put. Wars on abstract nouns like drugs and terror never make sense ethically. Unfortunately, government has little to do with ethics in modern society.

Instead, the legislation is there now (and arguably always has been there) to benefit backers of the state, as all oligarchies eventually do. In this instance it's tobacco, alcohol, big pharma, the police unions and the for profit prisons that all want it to remain, and they continuously lobby for it.

On the scientific front, it again is a matter of funding. There is greater public sector appetite for studies proving "drugs are bad, m'kay?" than there is to prove the opposite. That removes huge levels of funding to prove the opposite, which is an issue inherent to politicising scientific endeavours. Ive read the studies that got published too early - so far all were not just statistically insignificant, but irrelevant as well. Unfortunately again, most people just see the catchy title "marijuana causesschizophrenia