Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

>...It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage

I don't know about other countries but the real push for harsher penalties in the US came in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine overdose:

>...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. Literally every committee, from the Committee on Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get a piece of the action

http://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_sti...

>...(and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense)

This sounds like an internal issue in Sweden - I am not really sure how much you can blame the US for this. Certainly other countries near Sweden have more reasonable drug policies and the US doesn't try and stop that or punish the countries that I know of.

>...and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.

The 1971 wasn't the first treaty on drugs. For example, the International Opium Convention that adopted restrictions on the opium poppy's psychoactive derivatives was in 1912.

According to wikipedia:

>...The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly-discovered psychotropics,[1] since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca, and opium-like effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...

>...So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society,

I don't think that Nixon was the first politician who tried to look tough on drugs in the US (or in other countries). Anti-drug propaganda has been produced since before "Reefer Madness" and politicians have been ranting about drugs for a long time. A difference really was that Nixon was one of the first to try to greatly expand drug treatment and reform sentencing at least in a small way:

>...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama Administration).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

The point of having the monopoly is be able to strictly enforce restrictions on things like marketing through an organization that is judged by compliance rather than by selling as much as possible.

> Well, if you nationalize heroin retail, then you will need to have a heroin shop in every hamlet, town, and neighbourhood. It hardly seems practical. You'll just end up with a somewhat smaller black market, instead of eliminating it.

Yet somehow places like Norway, with a population density nearly identical to Ontario manages to keep the black market for wine and spirits quite small, despite very high taxes on them compared to e.g. neighboring Denmark.

Which means there already is a suitable retail network. Or you can license pharmacies.

And the big difference is that people would be assured of getting clean, uncut, predictable doses. The cost of heroin is also so high and unstable that while there is reason to be concerned about making it too cheap, a large portion of the harm from heroin today is the high cost. The daily consumption of heroin for a typical user in clean, medical grade heroin costs less than $20 (we know, because it is produced for medical use, and prescribed e.g. in UK hospitals).

They can be, but so can a lot of drugs sold at the grocery store. E.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is one of the largest causes of liver damage in the UK. One of the big shifts there has been to restrict size of packaging and require pharmacists to exercise care (some will explicitly verbally warn you about the risk).

Ultimately I think that we'd in many respects do a lot better if it was possible for someone who wants to use things like Adderall for recreational use to go to their doctor and ask for advice and appropriate monitoring and know they won't be refused, than having people randomly taking it without getting proper advice.

But I also think another large potential benefit would be for doctors to be able to steer those who insist on using drugs to safer analogs were possible.

Agreed. I hope it is a turning point too.

Now I wish we could have a national dialog about alcohol in this country.

What's not to understand is where ethanol falls here. It's easily as addictive as opiates, including heroin