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to stop a person from indulging in a substance while causing no one else any harm.
That's a really naive description of drug use.
No, it's a very accurate one.
What's naive, or even deceptive, is blaming the purported harm to others usually attributed to drug use on the drugs rather than on the individual using the drugs. Families "destroyed by drugs" are really destroyed by laziness and refusal to accept personal responsibility. Vicims of "violent crimes fuelled by drugs" are really victims of violent criminals who also happen to use drugs.
I invite you to become a victim of crime sometime, like I have. You will find that the perpetrator has the same predatory impulses whether he is using drugs, is in a drug-free but drinking phase, or is using nothing at all.
I know for a fact (but will not reveal how; sorry) that, during Prohibition, those who sold illegal alcohol also sold marijuana. It seems generally accepted that pre-'60s, a relatively "drug-free" era was the greatest. But it was well before the '60s that CocaCola contained cocaine and that paregoric was OTC, along with many narcotic-containing patent medicines. These included, by the way, heroin.
Why didn't we need "no-knock" raids back then, back in the "good old days"?
No, something else changed during the '50s, and then morphed during the '60s and matured in the '70s and '80s. It was the widespread availablity of television. It took a few years for the owners to realize how much money could be made by infusing drama into the reporting of news, and that television was the perfect instrumentality for this.
Hype became, and still is, reality.
Arrests without raids, particularly dramatic no-knock raids, don't attract the worm-brained rubberneckers to the screen. No-knocks and standoffs do. The television media have a great vested interest in the continued use of such tactics, so they're not going to go on a campaign any time soon against them. And, since drugs seem to attract no-knocks, the media isn't going to be presenting a truthful view of them either.
No need to worry, though. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and it's only a matter of time before your favorite innocuous pastime is seen on the evening news as having a "Hidden Hazard" and becomes banned and subject to no-knock warrants to protect the children.