More and more people, despite prohibition, use drugs. Young people do not find it hard to obtain drugs, but they do associate the drug habit with illegality. They therefore enter a culture in which illegality is regarded as a good, or at least a necessary thing. It is sad that hundreds of thousands of otherwise reasonable young people are tempted into committing a crime. The case against the status quo is therefore strong.
Drugs do terrible harm, and sometimes kill.
Parents need legal support for their efforts to prevent their children from taking drugs. Without that support, they would feel powerless. It is an attack on decency and should be repudiated. Anyone of a conservative cast of mind is bound to take these objections to reform seriously. Few can positively like the idea of drugs becoming accepted, and it should surely be admitted that legalisation, in the short though not in the long term, would lead to wider consumption.