Should Drugs Be Legalized?

My coworkers and I were discussing this subject today. Almost everyone thinks drugs should be legalized and there's no reason they should be illegal. A lot of new jobs will be created and if you take examples like the Netherlands, you realize the consequences are not bad at all.
What do you think? Should drugs be legal?

Marijuana should be legalized. In doing so it will reduce the workload of police who can concentrate on other crimes, and it could also provide many jobs that currently don't exist by creating an industry of commercial growers and producers. As for hard drugs, I think that under close medical supervision, some hard drugs could be legally given by a doctor to reduce drug crime.

Fundamentally, we need to consider legalization because the criminal justice approaches of the past have failed, and those of the present and future are likewise largely doomed to failure. This has nothing to do with squabbles between law enforcement agencies, or corruption in Third World countries, or whether or not we have a Drug Czar, or whether or not his name is William Bennett. Rather, it reflects the nature of the commodity, the nature of the market, and the lucrativeness of it all.

It is frequently stated that illicit drugs are "bad, dangerous, destructive" or "addictive," and that society has an obligation to keep them from the public. But nowhere can be found reliable, objective scientific evidence that they are any more harmful than other substances and activities that are legal. In view of the enormous expense, the carnage and the obvious futility of the "drug war," resulting in massive criminalization of society, it is high time to examine the supposed justification for keeping certain substances illegal. Those who initiated those prohibitions and those who now so vigorously seek to enforce them have not made their objectives clear. Are they to protect us from evil, from addiction, or from poison?