The success that Portugal is having is great, but I'm not sure if we would get the same results as them, at least over night. We have a lot more people and a lot more illicit drugs and guns flowing through the country right now, so I tend to think a system in which all drugs are legal, drug manufacturers and distributors are taxed, etc. would take a lot more time to implement than in a place like Portugal. Also the prohibition comparison is a bit flawed IMO because alcohol was suddenly illegal after it had been legal for generations. People wanted to drink because they always had. I'm not sure how much of the demand had to do with the simple fact that it was illegal. If there was a surge in demand as you claim, it was probably distributors and consumers trying to get their hands on it while they thought they still could, similar to gun shops selling out in minutes after Obama talks about new initiatives for stricter gun laws. Who knows though, you could be completely right. I just think humans aren't as simple as that, there's no way to guarantee that demand will go down simply because of the drugs not being cool and illegal anymore, and there's no way to predict what would happen if all drugs were suddenly legalized. Some people don't want it to happen simply because they think that might be a dangerous path for our country to go down, and I think they have a point.