But you should consider yourself lucky...lucky that you were able to back away from the abyss that is drug dependence all on your own...and lucky that you were never caught and charged with illicit drug use when you were using.
But think about those that havent stepped back from that abyss...and the money this country has INVESTED (that is how I look at it) in fighting this scourge that is drug dependence and the trade that surrounds it and feeds it.
I firmly believe it is money well spent.
Drug use is hardly like stepping into the abyss. It's more like a swimming pool. You have the shallow end where it gradually gets deeper and deeper until it starts taking a sharp drop into the deep end.
Most people play in the shallow end and don't get close to the drop off. Some people get close to the drop off, see what is about to happen, and back off. (Like myself.) Some people are having too much fun to see what is happening and go off the drop off into the deep end. Even then, some people don't care that they are drowning. Others desperately want help.
There is the lifeguard that everyone pays through taxes and usage fees. But instead of rescuing the people who are in the deep end and want help, the lifeguard gets a baseball bat and beats up everyone he catches swimming in the pool and lets the people in the deep end drown.
So the end effect is that anyone that wants to play in the pool have to sneak in at night without any supervision or safety precautions in place.
Most of the people who are playing in the pool stay in the shallow end and don't even come close to the drop off.
Going with
government statistics, in 2001:
41.7% of people 12 and older reported using illegal drugs.
12.6% reported using illegal drugs in the past year.
7.1% reported using illegal drugs in the past 30 days.
Most people who use drugs don't become seriously addicted. The addiction rate in the US has remained fairly consistent over the last 80+ years at about 1.3% of the population. The WOD has had no affect on this. It is money wasted.
I stepped back because I saw where I was going and decided that I wanted to stay in the real world and not the world that drugs created. I actually didn't plan on quiting drugs. I originally planned to just take a break and get my act together and then go back to limited usage. I simply never started using drugs again as I found other things to spend my time and money on. There are other people who I knew on a limited basis that did this as well. My story is not unique.
Some people see where they are going and prefer the world that the drugs create and not the real world. You can't help those people any more than you can help an alcoholic who wants to drink themselves to death.
The best you can do is to tax those substances to offset the cost. Cigarette smokers already pay more than their fair share. (What do you think all of those taxes are for?) They die of diseases that are relatively cheap to treat and don't result in them lingering on for too long. Lung cancer often isn't detected until it is too late and when it is, death usually follows relatively quickly. They help preserve Social Security and Medicare by not dying of long lasting diseases like Alzheimer's. It's morbid, but true.
Making victimless crimes illegal rarely makes anything better.