Drugs affect behavior. Drugs that historically were assimilated via elaborate cultural mechanisms -- such as alcohol, beer, harvest, festival, +folk remedies fo

Drugs affect behavior. Drugs that historically were assimilated via elaborate cultural mechanisms -- such as alcohol, beer, harvest, festival, +folk remedies for overdose -- are part of the societal matrix and accounted for. No one really (really, outside of comical personalities) ultimately cares about "tight control [over others'] consciousness". People who care about societal order care about 'understood' phenomena and pervasive cultural mechanisms to sublimate its effects. Even assimilated drugs (again alcohol) still cause societal ills, even with literally thousands of years of usage experience. A drug that makes you bliss out is perfectly fine for you, but a society of blissed out slackers could be looking for future trouble. That is really the legitimate basis for minimally thinking about the wide spread use of drug X (that affects behavior). That should not be controversial. Our modern additional factor is that there are for profit entities that also produce "medicinal" synthetic formulations that offer individuals some form of chemical psychological relief and pleasure, and thus present the possibility of distortion of facts around other, natural, drugs. Whether the effect of a drug is primary or incidental is irrelevant. That the 'effect' occurs is the only thing that matters. I remember this previously famous electronic music artist who lived in the basement of the building where I lived as a student in W [109]th in Manhattan where he could score Heroin on the sidewalk. He was a Heroin adddict. He was intelligent and articulate. The Columbia English major girls kept him company. We had interesting conversations regarding addiction. His two main points were, that Heroin finally gave him relief from the un-ending pain/sensory-input of the body. He had an elaborate theory regarding that benefit. His second point was regarding the harm of Heroin. His take was that all negative effects of heroin were secondary and related to maintaining the usage, not the drug itself. I.e. if you were rich it was not a problem drug. You raided mother's purse only if you were poor so let's not blame Heroin. :)