Look, I understand that you are referring to that guy in apartment 4c who brings some pot for his buddies from Colorado to finance his daily bong. That is quite different from, say, a Pablo Escobar who sells in tonnes leading an organisation the size of a large multinational, including a private army.

I'm as pro-legalisation as they come, but any reasonable person would have to admit that the damages caused by the actions of the leaders of big drug cartels are, in the aggregate, causing at least as much suffering as, let's say, a single rape. I know I'm threading on thin ice here because this might make it seem like I'm trivializing rape, which I'm decidedly not, but regardless of what side of the debate one is one, it's wholly unreasonable to assert that drug dealers do not cause any suffering and that they are in no way responsible for that suffering (i.e. the 'users make their own choices' and 'if I didn't sell it, somebody else would have' arguments).

You are conflating the (very real) damages caused by drug consumption with the much larger damages caused by other crimes in the illegal drug trade. Drug cartels do a lot of murder.

Drug laws would lock up for good the guy in apartment 4c as well, and large segments of society do not see him as "quite different" than the cartels.

No, I'm not conflating anything, I was referring to the suffering of addicts and their families from addiction itself, apart from the second-order crime from cartels and addicts who need to commit petty crime to fund their habit. Now one might argue that that suffering is caused largely by the mere fact of the drugs being illegal, and in fact I made that argument myself usually. That doesn't change the existence of that suffering though, even if it's relatively small compared to the total.

And all of that is separate still from the murders drug cartels commit as part of their business operations, I realize that. Apart from all that, there are still harmful effects from their acts. (hence my wording 'in no way responsible' - they are not fully responsible, but are at least contributing, and their contributions to many cases make for a lot of aggregate negative effects).