Corruption is a tradeoff. Is the risk to lose your safe job and possibly land in jail worth the money? So you need money to corrupt officials on a large scale, a lot of money.
Obviously that kind of money is no problem if your profit margin is 80%. Legalizing drugs (hence introducing highly industrialized competition) and helping those who are truly addicted tends to quickly kill that margin.
I'm not saying legalization is the golden bullet; obviously you will have to do a lot more to reverse the damage done by millions in prison, impoverished, killed, or corrupted in the government apparatus. But its the starting point to stopping the cancer from expanding.
Obviously that kind of money is no problem if your profit margin is 80%. Legalizing drugs (hence introducing highly industrialized competition) and helping those who are truly addicted tends to quickly kill that margin.
I'm not saying legalization is the golden bullet; obviously you will have to do a lot more to reverse the damage done by millions in prison, impoverished, killed, or corrupted in the government apparatus. But its the starting point to stopping the cancer from expanding.