"Too many vested interests and it's a vote loser, anyway. Never mind it makes sense, but if drugs WERE made legal, the "saved" monies would no doubt just be used to prevent Social Secuirty from going insolvent for another six months or to give the senior citizen voting block all the free drugs they can choke back or poured into public schools to "improve" education by increasing teachers' salaries or some other entitlement program. "

True enough, but at least the money wouldn't "feed" to the thugs and various other terrorists.
But I know legalizing drugs not going to happen- unless something dramatic happens that will force this change, or it's a slow gradual thing (requiring the death of a generation or two before it's realized it's not a solution to outlaw what some people choose to do- whether it's drinking/smoking/or whatever)

"I used to make comparisons like "If the government can spend X on Y, why not <insert hobbyhorse space project here"?!>. For example, for what the US government has poured into nuclear fusion research or particle accelerators/colliders which have not yielded any public good in a economic sense, the US could have built enough space infrastructure to build lunar/NEO-sourced SPSes and solved the energy crisis (maybe)."

I think if you simply give the government lot's of money for anything they will just waste most of it- including my favorite space projects. The problem with most gov projects is they simply aren't focused enough- they aren't focused on completing some task, rather they are focused on getting bigger budgets. If you give them lot's of money, they will find ways of wanting (needing) more. NASA gets plenty of money, they simply need to change how they do things (but "they" don't want to and probably won't ever want to- unless some external force interferes with this mindset).

"But taking this tack is useless. You just have to deal with the here and now and accept political and economic realities. If what the Russians say about having a $20m-paying tourist being lined up for nearly every scheduled Soyuz taxi are true, this might show the feasibility and profitability of space tourism. RLV R&D companies might start getting a little more serious attention from venture capitalists, designs for orbital tourist complexes might get a little more consideration. If tickets were $5m or $10m rather than $20m for a week-long stay in space, how much bigger is the potential tourist market in the near term? Double? Quadruple? "

What the Russians are doing does help, a bit. But right at the moment the Russian lack the economic wherewithal to have any significant impact in directly bringing about space tourism. I think the path of space tourism probably will start via sub-orbital transportation.
Other factors could affect space tourism would be space development using resources near Earth (Moon and/or NEOs). China and even India could be significant players in this.