US homicide rates are near the all time low achieved during the 1950s

FBI: US Homicide Rate At 51-Year Low

To finally reduce homicide rates we need only legalize recreational drugs, and just as the sale of liquor went from deadly during prohibition, so will the sale, and distribution of recreational drugs. Then we can deal with the consequences of drug use as a medical/social issue and not as a shockingly expensive criminal issue. The expenditures will be far lower and we will finally be able to help those who actually want help. 

​More below.

Or we can leave homicide rates where they are; leave our sky high drug imprisonment rates where they are; build walls on our borders to keep out drug mules; and otherwise continue to economically act to the detriment of the US. 

The common estimates of violent crime attributable to the illicit drug industry is at least 50% and likely 70%. This means that over time, perhaps a decade, we could lower our homicide rates by 50%-70%, what possible reason could we have for dithering? Well, there are all of the myriad people in law enforcement, corrections, law, the judicial system, counselors, social workers, and others who would likely be economically affected. 

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.

Indeed, it is impossible or nigh unto it to convince a man of something his salary contradicts. This is not just an economic issue, it is also a race issue. Blacks suffer the consequences of this problem far more than whites, and it seems also to be a class issue, with the middle and upper class suffering less than the lower class. Lastly, by eliminating the drug contraband, much of welfare fraud would be dried up. 

It is difficult to see how imposing such a damaging, draconian law benefits the US at all. To the contrary it is totally destructive. 

To those who believe there is some huge cohort of people just waiting to become meth, or heroin addicts, who are these people? The drugs are easily available today, who comprises this cohort of drug wastrels in waiting? Or is it a phantom, a fear, ephemeral yet with powerful hold?