People do it to themselves. It's not like people don't know what hard drugs do to human body. They willingly start taking them. It ultimately is their own choice. Same can be said about alcoholism, btw, yet that is perfectly legal.

Somehow, it's mostly accepted that making it harder to intentionally kill oneself is not the right way to stop people from committing suicide. Yet at the same time, we still consider this total war on drugs the correct approach to preventing people from killing themselves with drug abuse. The sibling comment is right.

No, but it's not the root cause that should be fought.

Things that cause drug abuse, especially the most harmful ones, are:

* lack of education. This was sometimes on purpose, with drug companies lying to get people hooked on opioids

* poverty and despair in general

* mental health

* many other things

Those can and should be fought, and they are a lot more effective than policing overall, and also a lot cheaper.

How many dead annually from inactive lifestyles or overeating? Those are all choices that people make that affect them — nobody should be forced to live in a virtuous bubble just because it might extend their life a few years. That's all totally different from choosing to harm another human being.

The vast majority of drug victims are really the victims of war on drugs - that’s what makes clean, safe drugs unavailable and forces people to use dangerous replacements.

From the very beginning the American war on drugs was motivated by racism. It’s just another state-organized genocide in disguise.