Maybe sometimes. But it can also have a heavy impact in families and communities. Parents looking for kids doing drugs. Relationships destroyed. Lying. Siblings lacking attention when all the attention is on the drug user. Partners of drugs users abandoned – or hurt – physically, emotionally and economically. The same with their kids. Stealing to stop the craving. Murder is knocking on the door . . .

When you have invited substances to take over your mind, you can't be sure that it will let you be the captain on the boat without a heavy fight.

Yes it does have those impacts, which is why medical intervention instead of criminalisation should be the norm.

Abuse, violence, stealing and so on are already crimes in their own right, regardless of whether drugs are involved or not. They directly involve harm inflicted on other people. The act of doing drugs does not, so why make that a crime, too?

It's a slippery slope argument, it's like saying cutting yourself should be a crime, because people who cut themselves have issues and could harm others.

Just like drug users, they should be helped, not punished.

>When you do drugs, you're only really harming yourself.

Tell that to the children of addicts

This type of thinking doesn't help, because jailing addicts doesn't help (or work), either. Addiction robs you of most or all of your agency, it's not so simple as just blaming the addict for their behavior.

The current legal status of most drugs in the US has a profoundly net negative affect on drug use and its ripples, not positive, because anyone wanting to help those addict parents risks just having them simply thrown in prison for who knows how long. Until seeking help isn't a massive risk, addicts will always end up helplessly trapped.

Even if drugs were legalized, children of addicts would still be taken away by CPS and put with relatives or into foster care. It's a crappy situation all around but legalization wouldn't change it

But it shows that consuming drugs does harm people other than you. So we're back to: why should drugs be legalized or decriminalized?

Because legalizing doesn’t mean a greenlight.

Cigarettes and alcohol harm those near them, but there are stiff regulations in place, there are social stigmas attached, and heavy legal consequences.

The legalization gives the government the funding to actually do something about it in proportion to demand.

We already have seen this during prohibition. It’s either regulate demand, or pretend that it can be banned and let a non government entity rise up and take power.

> When you do drugs, you're only really harming yourself.

Though buying (some) drugs is like buying blood diamonds, funding misery for your own satisfaction.