Honestly... I have to respectfully disagree entirely. I'm hard pressed to see how legalizing drugs is the right direction for our country. A better question might be why do so many depend on drugs?
That is a good question - but do you really think the answer is to lock people up in prison for it? Is the answer to break into people's house in the middle of the night with SWAT teams ? The police will answer that they need the swat teams because people are armed - well everybody on this forum should realize why those people are armed - if you thought somebody was going to break into your house and gun you down - you would probably arm yourself.
Honestly I can't say 100% that I think legalization is the answer either. However I do think that the so called "war on drugs" has done serious damage to this country. And it has a direct connection to our right to bear arms - because whenever law enforcement goes in to try and seize drugs - and those people who are being raided fight back - with guns - our politicians have one more excuse to link guns and crime.
Furthermore the viciousness that the drug war is fought with comes in a large way from the fact that many of the people who are taking drugs feel that they are doing nothing wrong. So when they get persecuted for it they do what people normally do when they feel something entirely unjust is being done to them - they fight back. This breeds contempt for "civilians" on the part of the police because they have to resort to extreme tactics to make any progress in the drug war. Then it breeds contempt for police among civilians because those police are trying to take away something that many people dont see as "wrong".
This is exactly what happened during prohibition - and it has been pointed out that it is not a coincidence that some of the first restrictive gun laws occured during the 30's (i believe it was 1934) - all those law enforcement people now out of work had to have something to do - why not send them after gun owners now.
Go read Vin Suprynowicz 's "Send in the Waco Killers" and let me know if you still feel the same way about the drug war afterwards.