Pleasant Politics

The problem with your comment wasn't that private prisons are a problem, it's the conspiracy of implying they are wholly responsible for the drug war. The private prison system abuses an opportunity, but they are not the ones defining and creating those opportunities.

You are ignoring how international the criminalization of cannabis is by looking at facts through rose tinted glasses. Check the link to your map again, it is not "decriminalized" in many EU countries, at best it merely labels them as mixed and does so subjectively, since in many cases it admits it is illegal but applies a subjective criteria to determine what makes it mixed. It's also unclear why in Germany it opts to mark it as approved/decriminalized because medical marijuana is allowed, when many of the mixed labels are the same as well. Read my original comment again, my criticism doesn't really apply to medical marijuana.

Using the excuse that there are worse drugs is just whataboutism 101. There's a reason those examples also have heavy legislation surrounding them in most countries, but I would argue that our societies are still struggling to deal with their negative consequences. Now we are adding more drugs into the mix that are complementary to those, making them more potent, and even affect the same risk groups. But what I'm also worried, beyond negative side-effects and addiction, are the psychological consequences.

Feeling like shit is something evolution left so that we could shape our relations and priorities with, to, and versus society. When it's too much then you have depression and it can be a medical condition, but you are supposed to feel like shit because the circumstances are shit, you are supposed to deal with shit, and you are supposed to gain experience from other times you deal with shit because the gravity of shit usually means of having to employ approaches that are shitty and need to be particularly nuanced to avoid making them even more shittier.

Psychological studies aside, as someone who lives near a drug dealing hotspot, it isn't the addiction or the negative health consequences making a lot of drug users act like shit, it's the erosion of the capacity to perceive what's right and wrong because you are always giving yourself a transcendental pat in the back even when surrounded with the people who have committed violent crimes to sustain their drug habit. Drug users can become jerks, and yes, you don't need drugs for that, but there is already enough toxicity in the world, it adds more of it. More importantly, maybe you do need to become a jerk but by taking drugs you won't really know whether it's really the drug making you become a jerk.

And yes, addictive food should and is becoming criminalized. That's why some countries/states are putting taxes on junk food and soda. The effects are negative, they are addictive, and even psychological with some of the shit that's allowed. Food and beverage companies aren't your friend, Coca-Cola was Cocaine-Cola at one point of its history. Don't get started en excessively sugary cereals and refined carbohydrates that may be linked to the increase in autism. Again, whataboutism.