I'm a white guy, not well off by any means. After my dad died when I was 14 it was just my mom and I. My dad died during the summer before my freshman year of highschool. Once I got into HS I hung around with some kids who were unnecessarily rebellious. Other people in our group were more reserved, and we watched as the rebellious ones fiddled around with drugs, trying to be "cool" and "tough". I never had much of a problem with weed, in fact now I'm an avid weed smoker. I see it as a dumb pass time, it isn't harmful but it isn't really productive. But those bad kids kept doing stupid stuff, and the rest of us started to disassociate ourselves from those two kids. After highschool they were addicted to oxy's and one in particular, smart bossy kid like myself, just kept doing dumb stuff making poor decisions. He was in and out of jail for stealing, his parents were able to afford good lawyers to get him into rehab. None of the rehab clinics did anything for him, he just met and mingled with more and more rebellious drug abusers. He moved on to heroin, OD'd due to fetenol being in his heroin batch, and one of my best friends who happened to be there saved his life. That kid never changed just kept doing heroin. Last O heard he was back in jail.

You can typically see this behavior from a mile away. I don't know what the answer is. If you decriminalize it, it might help. Then again, if the punishment for it was death, you might also see less abuse just out of fear of repercussion. I am not the best person for coming up with solutions though. For whatever reason, in life, I have observed this behavior and these problems. As someone who really has had it rough, I don't understand why some people use the argument that tough situations turn people towards drugs. I can see it, but my philosophy is that people, at the end of the day, are the ultimate decides of whether or not they involve themselves with drugs. It's their responsibility from start to finish.