>> but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis.
>So, what of it? We should keep doing things we know don't work because the uninformed don't understand?
So we live in a democracy, and so have to pay at least some attention to what the people want.
The alternative is a dictatorship of some sort. Historically, those tend to ignore cost-benefit analysis and whether or not things actually work just as much as any democracy. Main difference is that the opinions of only one or a handful of people matter, and you have no access to influence those opinions, no matter what you think of them.
We don't live in a democracy for exactly those reasons. We have a Constitution to prevent the will of the people from doing certain things. We have representatives to temper the will of the people even more.
We are very purposefully NOT a democracy, because it is well understood that majority rule for everything is VERY bad for the minority, and EVERYONE is a minority in some aspect of their lives.
Sure we care what the people want. If they don't want to die in fires we hire fire-professionals and fund them to prevent and extinguish fires, teach fire-safety, etc.
Somehow people don't consider it a dictatorship that we don't poll the common person for fire-safety law...
And especially in an area (drugs) where we know that hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda and advertising have been spent on teaching lies, we shouldn't pretend that polling the victims is going to be informative in relation to their natural (untampered) desires.
Not true. Many people reasonably take the pills their doctor gives them and end up with an addiction.
> That poses another moral question: if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them
Because you can't. It failed. It's not a moral question. In fact, that's specifically the problem.
> but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis.
So, what of it? We should keep doing things we know don't work because the uninformed don't understand?