Look you are the one who insisted on dragging tobacco into the discussion, so I guess I wasn't clear on what your criteria were. Naive assumptions aside, alcohol is certainly not anywhere near as destructive as heroin. Heroine is much MUCH more addictive than alcohol, with similiar effects on productivity. Were heroin to be legalized, its negative effects on society would dwarf those of alcohol. This is just not a valid debate, and pro-druggies should have abandoned it years ago. Do you know any heroin addicts? I do.
Heroin is certainly highly addictive. There is a very bad problem with it in Pittsburgh, particularly in the South Hills - to the point that Bethel Park High School is now known as "Heroin HS". For some reason it has become popular among high school kids to snort it or shoot it. The worst we did in high school was get drunk and the really "bad" kids would smoke pot.
However, I think there is a much deeper problem than simply the desire to get high. I believe it is a spiritual and moral problem. I believe kids today have it a lot harder today than we had it - not in material things (which they have all too much of), but in any concept of self worth. I have never seen such defeatists as I have in HS students today. A 15 YO girl I know who is a friends with the son of my friend was dating a dealer 5 years older than her (she was 14) until he hung himself. 3 weeks later she had another boyfirned and was shooting again. There has to be something very wrong there that goes beyond drugs. I think drugs are just a symptom of a much greater problem.
Just my opinion on the subject.
"There is nothing good about [it]" was YOUR criterion for illegality---a criterion that tobacco fit.
Were heroin to be legalized, its negative effects on society would dwarf those of alcohol.
Nonsense. This country has, if I recall correctly, about 100 million alcohol users vs. 1 million heroin users; even if heroin use quadrupled after relegalization (and I know of no reason to think it would), the numerical disparity would still make alcohol the #1 troublemaker.