Drug legalization isn't the panacea most people think it is.

First off, there seems to be some weird idea that if drugs were legal, people would sit quietly in their homes while using it. I can guarantee that a significant proportion of people in jail now would still be in jail, but instead of "possession of drugs" it would be "destruction of property/animal abuse/driving while under a substance/parental neglect/etc). Sure, the sentences are different, but that's an argument for changing the code, not drug legalization.

Also, what are we going to do with drug users? A lot of people seem to like the idea of simply throwing them in rehab to get them off drugs, but what happens when that doesn't worth multiple times, as is the case with most substance abusers? Is the taxpayer supposed to foot the bill for their entire life of being a failure at recovery? That's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, like myself, who view drug use as a completely voluntary act.

I'd be OK with drug legalization as long as we're willing to live with the consequences--which may mean letting drug users go homeless, hungry, and die. For a lot of users--I daresay a large majority of them, depending on how you define stuff--being "kind" only enables them. If we legalize drugs, we'd have to force them to live with the consequences, which very well could lead to death. Are we willing to do that? (The answer is no, by the way.) And as such I don't think they should be legalized, even though I think they should.