The Anglo West's approach to drugs has absolutely failed. Rehab the abusers, lock up and punish the dealers (some countries use the death penalty to strong results), and secure your borders properly.
Instead, we get kvetching and hand-wringing about "what can be done", and tittering discussions on online message boards, while society decays even further.
Who are you asking to do this? Daddy government? The federal government and its industry masters fucking love drugs. Caffeine and alcohol in every town, adderall-fueled tech and finance, FDA-approved Sackler opiates, US-guarded Afghan poppy fields, the CIA's LSD-based involuntary mind control experimentation on US citizens, the tobacco industry, the sugar lobby. You want these organizations to tell us what we can and can't put in our bloodstream?
Criminalizing street drug use and distribution will probably fail so long as there is strong and inelastic demand — the kind created by addiction. This is why it is important to remove demand by effectively rehabilitating the users, educating those not using, and not facilitating continued use. There is no "safe use" in reality; all use of controlled narcotic substances leads to addiction, and poor health and occupational functioning outcomes.
On the supply side, even the death penalty can be priced in when the demand is strong. The narcotics business is one of death, not just due to the criminality and the death penalty in some regions, but also due to no labor protections, prevalent drug use among the producers and distributors, and clashes with law enforcement and rival criminal orgs. This has deterred neither the suppliers nor consumers. When even the probability of death isn't a good deterrent, a probability of imprisonment won't work either.
Speaking of death not being a deterrent to lucrative business, the narcotics industry is not an outlier. Industries involving underwater operations like welding, oil rig work, coal mining, logging, high-rise maintenance, stunt performance, mercenary work, experimental aircraft piloting, and similar all exploit death for large profits. It's just capitalism. So a solution to the drugs crisis needs to work within a capitalist world.
I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. It’s a perfectly acceptable solution and has been tried with great results in El Salvador. I would argue that El Salvador is safer than SF and has a way more friendly tax policy. And the government is not trying to actively punish you for crimes you never committed, in the case of reparations.
Because unfortunately, ideology trumps reality on anonymous message boards. Too many posters here, despite the high end white collar work they do, cannot seem to apply similar smarts to managing society, instead falling back on their own biases and personal preferences. Harsh punishments are not "good", but living in a decaying drug-infested society with no solution is worse.
Instead, we get kvetching and hand-wringing about "what can be done", and tittering discussions on online message boards, while society decays even further.