>>26
No, I believe the method of making narcotics a legal company-driven product just would not work. There are many reasons, I think, why this idea could fail in ways that are just as consuming as our current anti-drug measures do. Though not all desired drugs are easy to produce, can I assume a simple example for argument? Cannabis.
To protect their own profit interest, companies would have to ensure that individuals could not grow their own cannabis, for example. Without this insurance, even the taxation money is vulnerable. This would require either legislation or such a widespread proliferation of a genetically modified product that does not produce its own seeds. The destruction of global bio-diversity of rice suggests that supplanting such modified plant could be feasible, but the modification might be seen as negative (whereas the rice was bred to increase its heartiness). That still leaves the prospect of producing the hypothetical mod-cannabis and then the enforced removal of naturally occurring cannabis. The latter being THE PROBLEM WE ALREADY FACE.
Let's start over, sans the modded cannabis which may be seen as a fantastic element to the question. We're only trading real cannabis and its seeds. Here's a nice one: someone buys a plant from a company and grows it for its seeds and, after some iterations of growing self-gathered seeds, begins distributing seeds free of charge or scatters them so that they grow wildly (for this whole argument I have been ignoring the fact that cannabis is already considered a "weed" in that it can and does grow freely in many climates without outside help). What can the companies do? what can the funds for the recovery programs do?
Also, legalizing a thing does not innately mean that makes it easier to regulate or reduces the burden of regulation. For example, making guns completely illegal as opposed to making them completely legal. In either case, the concerns and enforcement, and the risk of inflaming unrelated issues, still exist.