For people who can believe - or at least half-believe - in God,...

For people who can believe - or at least half-believe - in God, or Allah, then often (not always) it helps to settle their minds and helps prevent drug use. I personally know a family of regular church-going Christians whose many offspring are all in prison for drug-gang offenses, so Gods help is sporadic to say the least. I'm an outright, unwavering, life-long atheist who simply cannot believe in any religion, just not possible even with a gun to my head. If your religion is true, and all the others are false, then odds are that yours is false too. You believe what you were TAUGHT to believe. A Hindu doesn't arise from a Catholic family. All it took for me to avoid drugs (even cigarettes and alcohol for a very long time) is a sense of self-worth and striving for a better personal future. Add careful choice of friends, religious or not, and a hunger for understanding the world in all its glory, and drugs have no appeal. People make choices all day long, every day of their entire life. A huge part of that choice involves peer pressure and societal values. Look what has been done to cigarette smokers over the past 10 or 20 years. To my mind, freedom of choice, along with education and life experience will lead to the best outcomes. Religion is part of that free choice. To my mind, it is reasonable and sensible to legalise and regulate all drugs in a similar way that is done with alcohol, tobacco and pharmacy-controlled 'substances'. As mentioned already by HingDog and bellcurve, the current default reality is that anyone who wants these drugs (or guns, or prostitutes) can easily be supplied for the exchange of government fiat money, or anything of value. So who are we kidding? We can continue with this amusing but deadly "War on Drugs" for much, much longer than anyone thought possible, as long as the financial incentives are in the wrong places. Read up on CIA involvement with the running of the drug trade and it starts to make sense.