A lot of drug related casualties aren’t actually drug related but dealer related crap. This should go down if drugs are made legal. Sure, your average dealer can win against the government, but not against Big Pharma and mass production.

Most people would just prefer to get their drugs from an actual pharmacy than some shady guy in a back alley, even if it costs a little more due to corporate greed. The purity should be better and there should be less “oh no, I accidentally added rat poison to today’s batch of coke” deaths.

As for substance abuse, it should also decrease because a lot of the driving force behind drug use is just it being seen as “cool” due to its relative inaccessibility.

This would also save a lot of taxpayer money, which can be used to line the pockets of politicians do actually useful stuff, like better education, not to mention the tax collected from legal drug sales.