I fully agree; yet, this is a variable, by which I mean that each administration and each congress causes its own harm at its own levels, on the basis of constituents or whims. We almost must treat that as a stochastic variable and look back in history to try to predict future intended and unintended harms caused by a vacillating electorate, and, unfortunately, moneyed special interest groups like PACs, large corporate donors, oligarchs who hijack/bribe our policymakers, etc.
From the perspective of fixing immigration issues, until we kill the lobbying control and campaign finance corruption, the long term fixes need to be adjustable to the varying political climate. This is part of the reason we have career politicians (bureacrats): to make the system robust enough to weather the changing tides of popular opinion and special interests.
I agree, but there have been cases where making drugs legal was not done well, and lead to backlashes that can be as harmful or moreso than the current situation. I’m not sure what is the solution, but a carefully structured recreational drug use regulatory system would need to be part of it, with a robust enforcement component. Anna and Çenk have talked about what happened in Portugal and in Oregon with either legalization or decriminalization of (use) all drugs. We have lessons to learn from careful study of those specific ``experiments’'.
But of coursde, we must disabuse the populace and the politicians and law enforcement of the notion that imigrants are the source of illegal drug trafficking. These two issues must be dealt with separately, because the decriminalization issues will take a very long time compared to the more immediate need to deal with immigration issues directly.
Yes we need to do this; but ``we’’ do so. I think we need to better educate our populace so that our neighbors are less likely to be duped by these demagogues. Fundamentally better education helps develop critical thinking skills that make people less gullible. Our nation has fallen down on that score, so proposals to improve education and critical thinking are direly needed.