If you’re thinking as a citizen, this question isn’t so relevant: it doesn’t really cost you anything to support this policy change, talk to your friends about it, etc., and it’s not as if supporting this would take public money from anything else you might value—indeed, it’s a revenue raiser. I leave it open how valuable it is to spend extra ‘citizen time’ on this vs some other policy. Drug policy reform could be one item in a potential basket of ‘no-cost’ policies an effective altruist might support alongside, say, improved animal welfare. (I previously posted about a policy platform back in 2019, but nothing much happened.)
This assumes (possibly correctly, but should still be noted) that supporting policy changes/talking to friends etc about this is indeed close to free. I think there are some reasons to think otherwise (eg time spent supporting specific policy changes can be spent supporting other policy changes, time spent being in an “activist mindset”about X policy when talking with friends trades off against both being activisty about Y policy and also with time being in more exploratory modes of thinking, etc).
This assumes (possibly correctly, but should still be noted) that supporting policy changes/talking to friends etc about this is indeed close to free. I think there are some reasons to think otherwise (eg time spent supporting specific policy changes can be spent supporting other policy changes, time spent being in an “activist mindset”about X policy when talking with friends trades off against both being activisty about Y policy and also with time being in more exploratory modes of thinking, etc).