Don't knee jerk too quickly, TE. You'll miss the best part.
What's different, and where it impacts on my life, your life, and everyone's life, is that drugs are illegal.
(keep reading, TE!) Now, what that in effect has done is
create a culture of gangs, crime and assorted violences that catch innocent people in its grip and costs us a fortune in taxes to "fight." ("Fight" is in quotations because the oft quoted phrase "War on Drugs" is a silly waste of time, money and so often and tragically, lives.)
Now, to fully answer your question, I don't give a shit what some idiot wants to do with their own life. (I do care deeply about the preschool "crack babies" I saw while with the PTA, but that's another matter entirely.) What I do care about is our governement's passionate tendency to legislate morality, thereby
creating an unsolvable problem.
If the governement really wanted to "take a bite out of crime," they'd legalize the drugs, regulate them, tax them, make a fortune and cut the legs out from under crime syndicates. Gangbangers would have nothing to do but listen to bad music and wear worse clothes.
Anyone whose ever lost a family member to a drunk driver will tell you there's not a damned bit of difference between alcohol abuse and drug abuse. Anyone who has ever watched a family member deteriote in health and all other aspects of life due to alcohol abuse will tell you there's no difference. Anyone who's ever seen an old Jimmy Cagney movie about prohibition will tell (I snagged on the word prohibition and my husband muttered "the Volstead Act, 1920, or the 18th Ammendment to the Constitution" for those of you trivia freaks in the audience) you that there's no difference.
Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it...and repeat it...and repeat it....
I also think prostitution should be legalized. If there was ever a straight up, honest transaction "have sex with me and I'll give you money" would be it. The worst crimes in prostitution tend to be committed by pimps, which legal prostitutes would no longer require.