Actually it is incorrect to think that the politicians were just doing what the voters told them to do. That is an extremely superficial understanding of the war on drugs. In reality first propaganda was distributed, in the case of marijuana in particular the government had to be creative as people already knew about cannabis and thought it was fine. So they started to call it marijuana and demonize it, and people who were just fine with cannabis were then terrified of this new Mexican drug called marijuana, so it isn't like they really told the politicians to make cannabis illegal but rather they were tricked into accepting that marijuana was to be made illegal. In the case of the synthetic designer drugs in particular, less than 1% of the population even know about the majority of the ones that have been made illegal, so it isn't like they have had any say in making particular designer drugs illegal. It is bullshit to absolve the government of responsibility for starting the war on drugs and keeping it going, because in reality it was not something that was started by the masses and it is not something that would be kept going by the masses if they actually knew the truth about drug prohibition and drugs. Your notion of freedom and democracy is an illusion.