Russia is a good example. There was an enormous heroin boom between late 1980s and earlier 2000s. In mid-1990s out of a class of 30 in a high school in a low income neighborhood about half were on drugs and ten of them died before graduation. NGOs emerged targeting ethnic diasporas dealing with drugs and dirty cops covering for them and then legal reform meaning 20 years of hard labor to every dealer caught with hard drugs. There is no heroin trade in Russia anymore.
Russia is a good example. [...]
It remains the case that tough-on-drugs has a mixed record of success - and that true conservatives don't want to turn this Land of the Free into a repressive regime like Singapore or Russia.