> You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use. I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is ma

> You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use. I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is made to be a major life decision does not mean that the decision is made with proper due diligence or even with a rational mind. In fact, these decisions are usually made by very young people. This has the unfortunate side effect of locking a lot of people into a way of life because they decided to try drugs as a teen. It is possible to try some drugs and walk away like smoking a little weed as a college kid, but a lot of times drugs are used as an escape. At a young age that escape can be tempting and you can develop a habit. Now, if drug use were legalized and normalized, you could seek help and not otherwise impact your life, but as it stands it is more likely that a habit would result in a conviction which will follow them around for life making it harder to find a well paying job, decent housing etc. The cycle reinforces itself over the course of a lifetime. Now as far as numbers go, the current policies ensure that a drugs retention rate is as high as possible. If policies forced more churn, then the number of simultanious users at any one time could be lower. They could be higher, but we havent had the oportunity to see.