Comment Re:Once again: (Score 4, Insightful) 110
Most voters are idiots. Easily swayed by the fear of the unknown and a rather diffuse urge to "protect their children", of anything and nothing. Control their children would be more apt, in most cases, but I don't even want to go there.
People are afraid of change in their life, and they are afraid of things (and people) they do not know. The more conservative and the less contact wanted with "the others", the more fear.
Alcohol was something they knew. And they knew that it ain't bad. They even had a drink or two themselves and did they die from it? No. Of course not. Did they go insane? No, again, of course not. And so the support for the ban was very low outside the overzealous self-proclaimed warriors of moral. It was even "cool" to break that law.
Not just among teenagers.
As you correctly identified, the main reason for the fear of drugs (and yes, I mean fear, it's not just rejection, it is fear) is that drugs are "the unknown", and that we've been told time and again that drugs are bad, bad, bad things. It doesn't have to be as hilarious as "Reefer Madness", but we've all had our share of "drug awareness".
Do you think it's a coincidence that the discussion of the legalization of Marijuana happens now that the "generation of love", the Hippies, are about to reach the age that just so happens to be about the age most top level politicians are in? The generation of politicians that is now in power is the same generation that smoked pot heavily during their teen years, and they learned that it's not really as their parents taught them, that it's not leading to the fall of humanity and civilization.
In other words, we'll probably see the legalization of Ecstacy around 2030.