I'm from Portugal, one of the countries that decriminalized drugs, was also raised in a drug infested neighborhood, have/had family members and very close neighbors with that issue.
It's all about philosophy, incentives, and very little about the drugs themselves.
Drugs are irrelevant. It's all in the mind and culture.
I agree. Infact I teach my kids to avoid stuff that will degrade their health. At the same time many children do not have a nice family and get exposed to what is allowed. We limit them to drive cars, use money and have a bank account, they cannot buy chemicals that are dangerous. Why should we let them exposed to life changing drugs when they are in that period of life when peer pressure is so bad? Adolescents would do everything to keep friends. We have seen that with alcohol and cigarettes, I don't think is a good idea to let this happen with cocaine and heroin. And if the government would really stop it it would have been stopped
Because they'll find a way to have drugs whether we want them or not.
What we need is to show them the way, why and how to use or not use drugs.
Drugs are not to the problem, the problem is the mind. Thinking drugs are the problem is an incredibly narrowminded way of looking at the world and it will never work.
Buddhism explains all of this. If drugs are an escape (or done with a bad intention), we can't let people not escape, we need to understand what they're escaping from and lead them in a better way.
