Drug use is a habit of mankind, and cannot be exterminated.
Something people have been doing for thousands of years and in many
different cultures drugs have been taken under strict guidelines as
sacred rituals, some cultures and religions still do up till this
very day (churches of Santo Daime and several tribes in the
Amazon). It is when drugs are used to try and hide or dull other
problems that it becomes very problematic and can cause a lot of
pain and sorrow (this goes just as much for legal as illegal
drugs). To try and reduce this you have to tackle the problem at
it's root, and realise why it is that people try to blur out
reality with using drugs. Traumatic experiences in early childhood,
very low employment rates and little prospect of a career, they are
all commonly encountered in communities which have a lot of drug
problems.
It has been proven that harsh sentences for use, possession and
distribution of drugs does not work, many countries in South-East
Asia and the Middle-East have mandatory death sentences for
sometimes very small amounts of drug possession, yet it doesn't
stop the sale and use of drugs any bit, rather the opposite. By
making it illegal, it creates a market for those who can't get it
but still want it. This makes it possible for a lot of money to be
made by those who have a piece of the pie in the drug trade, money
which is then used to fund other criminal activities such as gun
trade, exploitation of women and children, etc. Although it's very
controversial to most people, the best solution would be to
decriminalise drugs and spend all the money lost on fighting a war
on drugs on really preventing drug use by creating jobs, investing
it in education of youths and creating a livable environment for
everyone, especially those with little prospect.
In the Netherlands, where Cannabis is decriminalised and where
anyone over 18 can buy it at a government licensed coffeeshop, both
the use of Cannabis and that of hard drugs has gone down. Compared
to the UK the use of Cannabis in the Netherlands is 3 times as low
(Cannabis is classified as a Class C drug in the UK, with class A
being the most harmfull drugs and Class E the least harmfull) and
compared to the US it is nearly 10x as low. Because Cannabis can
only be sold to adults and coffeshops who want to sell Cannabis
have to follow strict guidelines for risk of losing their license,
soft drugs are seperated from hard drugs, severely limiting the
chance of people who want to buy Cannabis from coming into contact
with someone who also sells Cocaine or Heroin, like most dealers.
Thus the "stepping stone" theory that Cannabis leads to harder
drugs is debunked. These measures me sounds very strange and even
counterintuitive, but experience has shown over the last century
that a tougher stance against drugs does not work, but tackling the
root problem of why people use in the first place, and what they
use is much more effective. Even many law enforcement officers
agree on this, seeing with their own eyes how the war on drugs is
more countereffective than the harm reduction approach, search for
"police against the war on drugs" at Google to see for
yourself.
