I think that there are two kinds of drug users, basically. People use drugs because of hardship and people who use drugs because of boredom. When it comes to the hardship camp, I think the best solution is to alleviate the hardship. This means making sure that everyone has a well paying, respectable job and making sure public infrastructure is healthy and so on. When it comes to boredom users though, it's hard to come up with a solution besides punishment. Look at the current heroin epidemic. Yes, it is illegal to use drugs, but affluent white kids don't have to worry about police, so they just don't care. I grew up in an affluent, white neighborhood so I have seen this first hand. In these places, there might as well be no laws regarding drugs. And I think the results are not very surprising. Dumb teenage kids try heroin and then get hooked and then suffer some horrible consequence which can oftentimes be death. I personally knew two people who died that way.

Your argument is like saying that we should make insider trading legal because people still do insider trading. Or that we should abandon financial laws and regulations because the great recession happened in spite of them. This is incorrect. Regulations prevent financial collapses. If harsh punishment were distributed to everyone who engaged in corporate crime then corporate crime would plummet. And I truly believe that if affluent white kids had a real, tangible threat to their short term well-being in response to drug use then we would see a massive decline in their drug use. I know that HN hates this opinion but I'm just being honest. Go ahead and hate me. Downvote away.

You have no idea why people use drugs, so don't even try.

"When it comes to boredom users though, it's hard to come up with a solution besides punishment."

Wow. Why should 'bored' people who use drugs need punishment?

I do have a sense of why some people use drugs because I have lived inside of a heroin epidemic. There's no reason to have such a condescending tone. Anyway, they should be punished to prevent them from using dangerous drugs.

You shouldn't mix me up with prohibitionists and Christians. I only want to prevent unnecessary suffering. Heroin and other very hard drugs only cause suffering and death. I have seen this first hand. That's how I know. People seem to hate me personally for having these opinions and I can't imagine why because I only have the welfare of other people in mind.

edit: I have looked through some of your comments. At one point you posed the question: what is the difference between letting someone eat cheeseburgers and use drugs? You practically make my point for me. Regulating the contents of food is extremely effective in reducing health problems. It has been done with success in many places. Saying that hard drugs (not weed and the like) should just be legal is like saying we should let food companies put anything they want into their foods and by extension let people eat whatever they want. Obviously, everything is much better when we regulate our foods.