It is often said that "soft" narcotic drugs (like marijuana) should be made legal, to draw people away from "hard" drugs (like heroine). They argue that one would always prefer to buy a cheap doze in a common drug store instead of a risky and expensive affair with a criminal drug pusher. They say that soft drugs are not too dangerous for one's health, and that there were many people who used them for decades without any visible harm.

Is it like that indeed?

No, it is not. The arguments in favor of soft drugs exactly reproduce those that drug pushers use to seduce silly young people and make them drug dependent. Usually, soft drugs serve as a prelude to harder drugs, which, in their turn, open the way for the heaviest. When one gets used to soft drugs, the experience no longer seems strong enough, and one naturally comes to trying something stronger, since any psychological barriers have already been destroyed. Gradually growing prices do not raise any objection since the market economy has long since stuffed the brains with the false idea that the price reflects quality and "more expensive" means "better". By the time when the price becomes too high, there is no way back, and the drug-addict is ready to anything for the next doze.

Then why is all the fuss? Who is interested in poisoning people? One could suspect drug producers and sellers to launch the campaign, since their profit is obvious and measurable in billions of dollars. But the principal figures behind the scene are much more important, and their profit is not as easily observable. It is a general law of the class society that the ruling classes are interested in narrowing the minds of the exploited majority, to prevent them from being able to see the inherent faults in economy and the unfairness of the social system. This tendency necessarily comes in contradiction with the objective requirement of mass education for economic development, which will inevitably make people cleverer with time, at least to adapt to the new cultural environment. Therefore, the old blinders will sometime fail, and some stronger means will be needed to suppress people's rationality and keep them under control. Doesn't it resemble, on the level of the society, the pathway of an individual drug addict from softer to still harder drugs? And the predictions about the end of that mad race are exactly the same.

There are numerous ways of narcotizing the population of the Earth, some of them used for millennia. Religion has remained one of the most efficient tools since the very dawn of civilization, and it is still widely used by the ruling class to divert the minds from the earthly things to abstract fantasies. The legalization of narcotic drugs is but another contribution in the global scheme.