Agreed. People in the US (and particularly trendy Hollywood and rock stars who feel obligated to use heroin) need to understand that there is a supply side and a demand side. I have seen a few, but clearly not enough of the PSA's that shove the link between drug use and funding of terrorism right in the face of the casual drug user. The same people who agitate n the side of relaxing drug penalties in the US are the ones insinuating that our government has something to do with narcoterrorism elsewhere - when more than any thing else it is their discretionary choice to buy these drugs that is causing enormous dislocations elsewhere in the world.
That's the drug problem distilled to half a sentence. The market will supply demand, somehow, someway. The only way to block supply is to make it very, very expensive, in legal consequenses to the suppliers.
But that's impossible with our commitment to civil liberties and the restraint we put on law enforcement in the pursuit of those liberties. I recently watched an HBO series called 'The Wire'. One of the sub themes that became evident was the difficulty in convicting people that are involved in the drug trade. It's darn near impossible, and as soon as they get one person, two more take his place.
You can't stop the suppliers, you can't stop the cultivators, so the last decade or so has seen an effort to come down hard on the users. Now we have a prison system that is overloaded with people that serve serious time for simple possession. What effect has that had?
None. I'm starting to think there is no solution.