I think this is interesting. There was a time when this country tried to lie to itself by saying all drugs are bad without truly educating it's populace about it. Consider that while smoking weed in the 60's and 70's was taboo, people did it, and it wasn't THAT big of a deal. No one was selling their kids for a bag of herb. No one was selling p*ssy for weed addiction and if they were, good riddance, it was natural selection at work.
Speaking as someone who was born in the 80's, IMO this country was batshyt crazy when it came to drugs. And instead of saying "Hey...this here isn't TOO bad but you shouldn't go crazy with it...this here is VERY BAD and you can OD off of it" they tried to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. And when you tell people they can't have something, it's only natural for them to be like "Wait....why the fukk not??" and try it anyways. All controlled substances are not the same. Equating weed and shrooms to heroin and crack just made the youth want to experiment, just like telling people not to have sex, people are gonna want to do it anyways and once they realize they can do it with little no consequence, now you got a problem as well as mistrust of the powers that be and authoritative figures.
In 2015, anyone doing heroin, crystal meth or crack cocaine is a fool. Information is readily available. It is well understood that not only can one OD on these drugs, but they are incredibly addicting. There is ZERO conflicting information.
Personally, I shed no tears for anyone getting hooked on opiates or amphetamines...this isn't the 1980's.
If the midwest is being destroyed by heroin and tina then fukk em