I grew up in NY state, which still operates under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws: people are sentenced to 15 years in jail for possessing less than an ounce of cocaine. I spent a weekend in an NYC holding pen years ago for smoking a joint, thanks to Guiliani's crackdown on minor violations (open containers, public urination, smoking pot—for these offenses, people were jailed for days, fined, or both). So yes, the drug laws are in place to oppress people as far as I can tell. Now you can get ticketed in many US cities for smoking tobacco outdoors. And there is a difference between drugs (the word comes from "drogevat", a Dutch word for the container powders were stored in) manufactured by corporations and sold at a ludicrous profit versus the plant gifts from the earth–marijuana, psilocybin, peyote, etc. These are helpers to humans when used consciously. Bottomless consumption of anything, which is where so many people have been led, leads to more suffering. And yes, drug law reform is desperately needed in the US and a lot of countries. Here people detox in jail cells and are offered little reason to want to get clean or support once they are released. Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton all built up the prison industry by ramping up the war on drugs.