If you decided to worry only about addiction and its medical consequences, in extending that to tobacco use, you would say that we will not worry any more about preventing use in adolescents, we will only fund the treatment of addiction, lung cancer, and other issues. As you can see, that does not make a lot of sense. You must think about the whole range of issues, including how to reduce use or prevent it in the first place.
It is not just an educational issue. The premise that if you educate people properly they will not use drugs is clearly wrong. There are school-based programs that have been effective in reducing drug use, but it is far more than "education."
Finally, it is clearly also a moral problem. We have all kinds of rules about the circumstances in which we allow drug and alcohol use. We do not allow public drunkenness, and we very much restrict how and where we use alcohol because it is intolerable for other members of society to be around intoxicated people under certain circumstances. It is a problem for all of society if teachers have to teach students who are stoned. That has an effect on whether anyone will even want to be a teacher. These are all components of drug policy and there is no point in avoiding them.
…
