Do you have a source for that? As drug abuse has been on the rise in the US for a while, and in general harsher sentences don't reduce crime.
>Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so.
It's more, "let's do things we think will prevent people from using drugs, accept the negative side effects those things cause, and lock up those that still end up doing drugs" vs "encourage people not to do drugs, and keep those that end up using safe while they hopefully recover." Harm prevention and reduction are not mutually exclusive, you prevent as many people as you can from ending up in a bad situation and still help those that need it.
Doing nothing about is it not a reasonable option. Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so. These approaches are mutually exclusive: you can't prevent substance abuse while at the same time helping people doing it "the right way". That's why there is a debate.
About immigration: do you want some stranger to live into your home. Opinion on immigration is just a large scale version of that. One view is "Do not want, he is loud and doesn't pay the rent", the other is "Cool, he is interesting and he cooks really well". Both are true, choose your side, or be somewhere in the middle.