f proclaiming that foreign drug lords and domestic drug pushers were poisoning America's youth. Public and governmental attitudes toward the use of illegal narcotic substances were heavily influenced by perceptions of the country's larger drug problem. The larger drug problem in the United States, however, had three major facets. First, there was the illegal use of illegal narcotic substances, wherein abuse, trafficking, and control efforts were exacting enormous costs on American society. Second, there was the recreational use of legal substances, the consumption of which was also exacting enormous individual and societal costs. This facet of the larger problem was concerned primarily with alcohol and tobacco use. The third facet of the larger problem involved the abuse of prescription drugs in the United States. This facet of the larger problem was complicated and contentious. There was no question, however, that the abuse of prescription drugs was as capable of causing problems that were as serious as those that could be caused by the consumption of illegal narcotic substances.
The drug enforcement policy of the federal government of the United States was based on a widely held assumption in the United States that the American drug abuse problem was caused by a few evil people in small Third World countries who were forcing American youth into evil ways, overlooking the fact that most illegal substance consumption was by adults. The American drug problem was defined as the illegal trafficking and illegal use of controlled substances, not withstanding that alcohol and nicotine are drugs, and not withstanding that the consumption of alcohol and tobacco was extracting far greater social costs in American society than all of the controlled substances combined. The use illegal narcotic substances had never been the source of as much or as serious individual and societal damage as had alcohol use. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine...