"But it's still as damaging to health as heroin   or cocaine.
"

I rather suspect a "not" has been missed out of that sentence by Peg.

I think when people talk about the evil effects of drugs they are missing the point. All kinds of things in our society have evil effects, most especially on vulnerable people. Junk food, just for a start.

However we generally recognise that attempts to impose bans and excessive restrictions by law on what people choose to do almost always seem to have bad effects that outweigh the good. There are better ways to go about it that don't have those effects.