I can find no evidence that drug prohibition, begun in the early 1900's, has helped.
The addiction rate to opiates dropped by over 60% from 1880 to 1900 while still legal. Since 1900, the number of people addicted to either opiates or cocaine has tripled.
Meant to ping you, not Willam Terrell, to post #603
If the actual rate of addiction is up, it may well be a combination of factors.
Availability, certainly, could be one. More likely, though, is that the behaviour of addicts, once obvious to any who could see, is now relegated to areas not travelled by many who might become addicted, thus parents cannot point out the down side of addiction to their children as effectively as before. Pictures on the internet do not strike home like a sweating shaking junkie with the jones'.
Anonymity (gained largely with the demise of the more rural environments--small towns) has no doubt contributed as well, along with the erosion of the supoport of extended family as the culture has become more 'mobile'.
The previously unthinkable can be done without fear of sullied reputaion or familial retribution.
Children (adolescents) used to rebel in more tame ways, and one of the fruits of a society where the merely outlandish and dangerous has been replaced by progressively more extreme variants of 'extreme', is that rebellion now takes forms either unthinkable or unheard of a mere 40 or 50 years ago.
WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.