I was never heavy into drugs but I smoked weed a fair bit in my 20s, knew a lot of other daily users of weed as well as some harder drugs. I don’t think I ever came across a person that randomly decided to do drugs for no reason one day and got hooked. They were all people who had pretty messed up problems in their life that were too complex for them to fix on their own.
So it confuses me when people instantly assume that someone is in a bad situation due to drugs rather than them using drugs to deal with a bad situation. And yes I know drug abuse makes problems worse the vast majority of the time but it’s not what I see as the root issue in a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom/coping mechanism for people that society have let fall through the cracks.
Easier and cheaper to actually do something about them.
If drought hits your country would you rather people focus on bringing water to the plants (lack of water is a visible, tangible, actionable cause of the problem) or start a meteorology department and wait for rain (because weather is the one that caused drought).
To make people not turn to drugs you need to provide them with a life worth living without drugs. I’m not talking utopian living. You want to turn people away from drugs? People who have their own house/flat, work less than 60 hours a week, have money to spend on hobbies after necessities like food or clothing, and have places to do those hobbies in. Those people do not turn to drugs. But those people aren’t obedient workers constantly stressed about chasing the goals of their employer. Those people aren’t exhausted sheep voting along party lines because they have no time or energy to research political topic themselves. If you are the government, you do not want those people existing at all.
As for marijuana - marijuana stalks can be turned into plastic-like but eventually biodegradable substance. So the reason marijuana was so demonized had nothing to do with drugs, but everything to do with it competing with plastic.
Hemp as fabric material was everywhere before the victory march of fossils. But is it really as good as plastic?
For modern use of plastics? Not really, we found even better plants to replace plastic and there are several startups in Asia, Africa and South America that use them.
For use of plastics at the time? Marijuana hemp only “downside” was being bio-degradable. The idea that your trash bag will outlive you was considered great back then.
Plastic industry is probably the most scam-infested one in the history of mankind. Even considering modern predatory tactics like gambling for kids. Do you know that when international community decided to use triangle made of arrows as a symbol for “recyclable product”, plastic companies lobbied for the same symbol to also mean “plastic” no matter if it’s recyclable or not? This is why every plastic nowadays has the “recyclable” symbol with number inside, number indicates type of plastic and only one or two of about ten types of plastic is really recyclable.