The War on Drugs is far more dangerous. It is the prohibition of narcotics that places the manufacture, distribution and sale of narcotics into the hands of criminals. Maybe politicians thought the "War on Drugs" was just a catchy phrase, but they were wrong. By declaring a War on Drugs, governments literally declared war on people involved in the drug business.

The US should have learned it's lesson during the prohibition of alcohol.

Individual drug use can be effectively treated through medical care and education

What are you going to do then with drug users if not medically treat them?

How do you teach people if not through education? (please be kind)!

I do. I try. But medically treating them is not nearly as effective a societal measure as would be an intervention that prevents people from starting drugs to begin with.

Teaching them isn't going to work very well when they're much more susceptible to chemical addiction and peer pressure. Drug education works the best for well-grounded kids with strong family and social supports -- i.e. the kids who need it the least.

peer pressure is a strong influence, how do you get around that?

some people with medical conditions benefit form certain types of drugs, eg, morphine

Fast forward past adolescence, I guess.

The kids least susceptible to destructive peer pressure are the ones with strong support systems, especially in the home.

Beyond that, look at what's worked for curbing teen smoking... getting rid of vending machines, banning advertising, and raising the price of cigarettes through taxation. That has worked quite well -- it limits access. The tobacco companies NEED teens to start smoking, because that's the only way they can make up for the 3000 people a day who die from it.

But these drugs do not have very great addictive potential when they're used appropriately. I can tell you that it's a pain to use them for real medical pain in people who already have a narcotic addiction, but we do what we have to for people. If a heroin user has surgery, I'm going to give him morphine or hydromorphone or whatever for pain.

How would you apply what works for reducing smokers to reducing drugs users? Get rid of the illegal market?

Why is it a pain, is it because their already addicted and have less effect or too much in their system will kill them?

Don't overstate this... First of all, individual drug use destroys whole families and neighborhoods, not just the few individuals screwing up their bodies.

And you think medical care of the individual helps the public health problem of drug use? Hardly. A minority of people will effectively be helped, absolutely, but it comes at a huge price and is exceptionally low yield -- in part because helping someone with drugs isn't going to work if their life is a complete mess.

Education? You weren't born yet during Nancy Reagan's big public health push. Her "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s. Those were my school years. We were inundated with the anti-drug education campaign. Yet that was one of the worst eras in the history of drug use, probably worse than now with the exception of the IV drug-induced HIV/HepC epidemics.

Education has never worked all that well with curbing teen smoking. Limiting access and increasing price HAVE worked.

I do think medical care can help a great deal. I'm not only talking about getting people off drugs entirely, but also about effective management of drug users. Holland style.

Honest answers about what drugs do to the body, honest answers about drug use. No more "you can overdose from marijuana". Let's cut the crap and give children the real story.

I'm not sure what has been done to limit access as cigarettes were always easy to acquire when I was coming up, and price certainly was not an issue when cigarette packs can be bought as cheap as a dollar, dollar fifty.

I don't. Drug use is inextricably linked to people's social context and psychological / psychiatric context. Treating coincident mental illness goes a long way. But you can't change where someone lives, you can't change their life stressors, you can't change their surroundings and the people near them.

Drug education programs are more nuanced than that. But you know, I think keeping it simple is a lot more likely to resonate. And while marijuana is safe, there is ample evidence that people who end up doing hard drugs had tried tobacco / alcohol / marijuana first -- so preventing marijuana use MAY prevent experimentation with harder drugs. Of course that's impossible to study, so we don't have controlled outcomes research on that question.

1) Cigarette vending machines now illegal
2) Mandated and enforced carding of minors in stores
3) Billboard advertising now illegal (or heavily curtailed)
4) TV advertising eliminated
5) Magazine advertising extremely limited
6) Heavy taxation -- cigarettes are now ~ $4 a pack with taxes, which means a lot more to a kid spending his allowance money
7) No more "Joe Camel" or other ads that appeal directly to kids

Banning the vending machines, and the supposedly enforced carding of minors does almost nothing, though. I say this because it wasn't so long ago that I was an underage smoker. All you need is a friend who is 18, which is easy to find in high school, or even just that one store around the corner that every town has which neglects to card.

And I know that increased taxes have driven up cigarette prices, but you can still find cigarettes for less than 3 dollars, less than two dollars. Even cheaper are these strange mini-cigar products that run about a dollar, dollar fifty. Not to mention the Salems I bought yesterday for a dollar each; they were on sale.