For sure there is a highly dangerous and criminal element to drug use and distribution. But this wasn't always the case. What largely makes the industry so dangerous and prone to usurption by unsavor individuals, to put it lightly, is the fact that it is an illegal market and thus unregulated. This poses a twofold threat: 1) there is no oversight as to the quality and composition of the products being sold. People can be told they're getting one thing while buying something completely different and sometimes harmful or even deadly. 2) lack of any formal legal structure around manufacture and distribution means the only realistic fallback is violence. A further point worth mentioning is that the state, to a large degree, provides this service in other legal industries (police, military and the penal system) but it is so widely accepted and well funded that it goes almost unnoticed and seldom questioned.

I agree with you that there is most definitely a need for laws and the enforcement thereof. But, on the other side of the argument, there is also the fact that there is simply too much money and human desire for drug use to ever go away no matter how much state backing there is behind the effort. Maybe somehow the governments of the world will learn to strike a balance and begin to promote trends in legislation and education to let society approach the issue a little more realistically.

My two cents. Best of luck. :-)