The problem is that people like to lump all (illegal) drugs into a single category. Ask most people and they will tell you that they don't consider the consumption of alcohol and tobacco "doing drugs". But marijuana, cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, peyote, LSD, that's all considered "doing drugs" which is a "bad thing". In general people aren't really familiar with the differences between these drugs even though there are huge differences.

Governments have been notoriously bad at determining the differences between these drugs. In their battle against the monolithic bogeyman known as "drugs", they have obscured and confused their categorization of the illegal drugs. For example, in the United States marijuana is in the same category as heroin. And in most countries, having crack is a much worse offense than having powder cocaine, even though from a physiological standpoint crack is no more unhealthy than powder cocaine is. The real difference is that crack is associated with poor minorities while powder cocaine is more common among the rich and the white.

Drugs have been a very convenient scapegoat for the government. It allows them to exercise greater power over us when they want to, and it distracts people from real issues that might make the government look bad. We can't expect the bureaucracy to get rid of this War on Drugs all by itself. We have to take to the streets and end it ourselves. But first we have to educate enough people to make a difference. We have to teach them that not all drugs are the same, and besides that, there's nothing wrong with letting everybody ingest whatever they want as long as they don't hurt anybody else.