@aerion111  

 
Exactly. If you don’t have the willpower to quit sugary snacks or coffee, you definitely don’t have the willpower to quit heroin. And you can just get outta here if you smoke.
 
If I remember correctly, the biggest factor that makes it nigh-impossible to quite drugs isn’t physical addiction, but lack of any incentive to quit. That is to say, people usually resort to drugs when they’re in a very dark place in their lives, and drugs, far from making anything better, only make the original problem worse. There’s no incentive to stop using that which gives you even a small illusion of respite.
 
Case in point: if you break a leg in the US and get carted off to the hospital, you’ll probably be hooked up to a drip that’ll contain one of the branded variations of heroin. You’ll probably spend most of your time asleep, in pain, or high as a kite. After about a month, you’ll be taken off the drip and go home, where you’ll experience genuine heroin withdrawal. Yet your chances of seeking out and taking the drug after that experience are zero. Not because you have such amazing willpower, but because you have no incentive to take the drug.
 
@Iago  

 
Spot on. Most countries have already experienced just how awful the War on Drugs turns out: it was called “Prohibition”.
 
To add to what you said, the prohibition is also likely the key factor in this psychological addiction.
 
@aerion111  

 
No, no. Lying for the sake of doing a good thing is perfectly fine. Ends justify the means. There’s no way it’ll lead to any problems. Out with your reasonable observations! Reasonable is not good enough!
 
@Background Pony Number 17  

 
No, all drugs are evil and will immediately kill you. We need to make sure people know that. That way when they take meth and don’t see any problems for a few weeks, they’ll know we’re full of shit and proceed to use it while their teeth slowly rot and… wait a minute…

@aerion111  
Why would you give up sugar? Only defensive teens who really are insecure about their age would do that. Adults don’t care about stuff like that, unless there’s health problems.

@aerion111  
Depends on the drug in question; each one has different effects making it harder or easier to show the dangers of addiction.
 
Meth is ludicrously simple–long term meth usage has clearly visible (and quite horrific) effects on the body. “Speed Kills” wasn’t coined by the anti-drug movement; it was coined by other drug users to point out that there were somethings even they shouldn’t touch.
 
With other drugs, the damage isn’t as noticeable nor is its perceived destructiveness. Nicotine is one of the most addictive chemicals known, yet people can smoke for decades with no apparent ill effects, until their lungs are ruined and cancer sets in. The effects of alcohol have been known since ancient times, yet enough people can “hold their liquor” enough to make the idea of Prohibition a non-starter.

@Iago  
I meant less ‘this is why pro-drug legislation is dumb’, and more ‘this is the angle I feel anti-drug legislation should take’  
Don’t go all ‘Oooga-booga! Horrifying images! You’ll die! Dieeeee!’ and dance around in stereotypical medicine-man masks.  
The moment people realize you’re talking BS, you lose most of the effectiveness - and, like you said, it leads to violence and stuff.  
And, like you said, some of the pro-drug legislation and general ‘campaigning’ is precisely to fight back against the anti-drug ‘war’ - it does often feel like people arguing for peace when there’s a potentially-unfair war going on. A lot of the same arguments, sometimes.  
You do not want to encourage people to fight against your cause… If you’re gonna be the kind of evil overlord that encourages heroes to come forth and fight for a righteous cause… You need to take a step further and become the kind of evil overlord that gets rid of those heroes.  
So either they need to step back and become less of a rallying point for people to fight against, or they need to step forward and try to become oppressive (which will be hard, given the checks and balances, but not impossible - we’ll see, I suppose)

@aerion111  

 
Coffee is good for you. It reduces your chance of getting cancer and diabetes, among other health problems. Using it as your example isn’t the best choice, especially when caffeine is actually considerably more addictive than many of the illegal drugs.
 
The reason why drug legalisation is important is not because they’re supposedly harmless, it’s because the effects of anti-drug legislation are worse than those of drugs on their own. Not only have they resulted in a cycle of violence and corruption in far too many countries, but they also prevent effective treatment of drug addicts, because the society has been conditioned to treat them as dangerous criminals instead of sick people in the need of medical assistance. That is why drugs need to be legal and regulated, not because, “it’s so groovy, man,” or any other pothead slogan.

Really, I’ve always felt the best anti-drug lesson is to take a long hard look at the ‘accepted’ drugs.  
Especially how hard people struggle to abandon even those.  
Even caffeine is something where giving it up is generally preceded by a story about how they had to gather all their willpower, avoid anything with even a trace, it was very tough for the first few months, and so on.  
If coffee can make people sound like they had to claw their way to freedom every step of the way, then screw the ‘Oh, most people are fine’ line pro-drug people give; The average person is not going to be able to stop if it’s even close to being as addicting as coffee.  
They’re not even going to be able to keep it in moderation; They don’t with anything else, after all.
 
Even sugar, which I’m fairly (though admittedly not entirely) sure is almost purely a psychological addiction, is something that a lot of teens struggle with giving up as they move into the young adult age.
 
I’m not saying this as a ‘better than you’ hippie either; I drink coffee and soda and so on.  
I’ve just heard how other people talk about it when looking back at when they gave up something fairly mild in terms of addiction; It’s some heroic journey you’d usually expect to hear from a recovered alcoholic or some such.

From experience? Yes… yes it will.