Strict enforcement happens literally every single day, we dump billions upon billions of tax dollars on militarized police, prisons where drug dealers get harsher sentences than rapists, and have had plenty of zero tolerance laws. Also I don't think making the case for the kinds of Nanny States that exist in the Middle-East (theocratic) and the bigger economies like China and Japan are sound arguments. In the Middle-East the ruling class does plenty of recreational drugs without enforcing their own laws on themselves and saving that for the peasantry. Weed is illegal in Japan,.but synthetic cannabinoids that provide the same high are not. Strict Chinese drug policies have enabled Mexican Cartels, and are right now fueling declarations of desire to invade Mexico by Republican politicians who are too chicken-sh*t to admit that Mexico is just a middle-man.
When China cracked down hard on it's own pharmaceutical black market, the corporations there who produce fentanyl and export it illegally made the move of selling the precursor chemicals to the Mexican Cartels. This brought the Cartels a big revenue stream and empowered their illegal business. The same happened with methamphetamines and traffic through Myanmar, where Triads deal in precursor chemicals to other groups who mix them.and then distribute meth from there. Would have never happened with better regulation and structure of the drug trade.
