Edit: I recall reading somewhere that 25% of people who use heroin develop addictions. Let's say that we are as successful at developing a culture of heroin use as we have been at developing a culture of alcohol use so that we can reduce addiction to 10%. It seems likely to me that any such culture would more than triple the number of people using heroin, so the overall effect is probably to increase the number of addicts.
I personally suspect that over 50% of drug users are attempting to self medicate in some way. Whether or not they are consciously aware that self medication is what they are doing, that's another question entirely.
"Drink drive, bloody idiot" is a slogan every Australian knows.
Yet alcohol is by far the most destructive substance in terms of both $ and human life costs. Which seems to weaken the argument significantly...
So maybe prohibition is not the answer. But whatever we've done with alcohol clearly isn't, either.
> for individual exposure the four substances alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroin fall into the “high risk” category with MOE [margin of exposure] < 10, the rest of the compounds except THC fall into the “risk” category with MOE < 100. On a population scale, only alcohol would fall into the “high risk” category, and cigarette smoking would fall into the “risk” category