This just goes to show, politics mean more than pragmatic solutions to politicians.
You have a substance, let’s call it urmaj, that is processed and produced by large corporations, is physically addictive, causes long term damage to various major organs, is usually a major perpetrating factor in many crimes, especially “crimes of passion”, and has proven to be a leading cause of death including by its own overconsumption.
While, another substance, let’s call it cloha comes directly from the earth, grows freely anywhere in any condition, needs no processing, has no addictive properties, is not responsible for terminal organ failures, is rarely the reason people commit crimes of passion, or any other violence, and does not cause death or destruction no matter the amount consumed.
In our world, urmaj, the first one, is readily availiable left, right and centre. The government controls it, taxes us for it, regulates it, and enforces the rules around its usage. Still, year after year, more and more people are dead from its misuse, dying from its addiction or injured by the accidents that urmaj causes.
While, cloha, the second one, is completely criminalized, and distributed only covertly through vast, worldwide organized crime networks who, more than a few have noted, seem to have friends in all the right places. More and more people are imprisoned over cloha each year in jail cells full of hardcore criminals, with whom, one can imagine, they get to spend lots of quality time swapping tricks and tips, making bigger criminals out of them when they get out than when they had first gotten there.
What a weird world, huh?