The taking of any mind altering substance is likened to anything in life that requires skill and knowledge. If you don't know what you are doing and are irresponsible, you will get into trouble. From my personal experience, I should say the majority of drug users are very ill prepared when going into these experiences. Popular culture teaches us that we need to party, get crazy, be wild, and have sex. When in reality most any drug has it's proper place and use.
Methamphetamine has been used by military pilots to help them stay awake. Cocaine was used by Freud and probably fueled some very interesting mania driven introspection and insight. Mushrooms have been used by ancient tribes to commune with the ancestors. Diamorphine has it's place in the treatment of severe pain and end of life scenarios. Cannabis can greatly enhance the senses, and has it's place amidst venues of entertainment and as a general relaxation enhancer. Alcohol has the ability to bring down social barriers. MDMA has it's use in therapy settings for helping people over come difficult past experiences, traumas, issues preventing them from getting over things or growing further personally. LSD has it's place as a tool for reprogramming the mind and helping people over come great fears or obstacles.
The list goes on and on and on. However, unfortunately, the disasters and train wrecks equal the success stories if not out number them. Would you expect a child to know how to use a power saw with out any guidance, training, and or assistance? No. You would let the child age into a young man, you would train them to wear safety goggles and pay attention, to respect the power. Same with a car. A child of 10 may be capable of operating a machine just fine with the right training, maybe even with out it. On the same token some people in their 20's, 30's, 40's, etc., drive like idiots and shouldn't be on the road, but they are, because there is a law and set of rules they may have skirted by. Even then, mistakes can happen behind the wheel to the best of us, some times, with disastrous life ending results.
The use of mind altering substances is a practice best imposed on the young adults/teenagers with guidance, and it is expected that if you are an adult, you are responsible and act accordingly to what you are under taking. When some one gets hurt or dies, we only have ourselves to blame for our actions. Sadly it is ignorance that kills/harms, not drugs.
Drug prevention and rehabilitation focuses not on proper drug use training, but rather teaches the idea of pure abstinence, which in a our consumerist society, is absolutely contradictory to everything we encounter every day on T.V., the media, the news, the internet, in our cars, on the radio. There are ways for the youth to be initiated, but often many youths are left to their own, with out any initiations, rites of passage, they get tatoos they later regret. They have drunken sex. They get behind the wheel of a car drunk. Some of us are fortunate enough to have been initiated in some sort of way. Perhaps through the learning of a skill for work and earning a living. Perhaps a single beer in the late teens as a coming of age token.
Sadly there just aren't enough people who know how to properly use most of these substances. Alcohol has been around long enough that it has made a place for itself in society, most notably among the proletariat, but also has it's place amongst the middle class and bureaucracy as well. Cannabis has it's roots in the east and in the middle east. The mushrooms and psychedelic containing plants in the south Americas and African tribes.
When cultures mix, there is a clash of culture, and mind altering substances are not exempt. I'm sure the affects of alcohol, "fire water", were quite devastating to the indigenous tribes of America during it's conquest, as was tobacco on the conquering people. Tobacco was a traded commodity reserved in use for special gatherings, as I understand it.
The important thing to take note of is that mind altering substances are not toys. If you break something, mommy and daddy won't be able to buy you a new one. They require knowledge, education of proper use, and responsibility. Cocaine for example is a concentrated chemical extraction of the cocoa leaf. A plant who's leaves are chewed much in the same way we brew and consume coffee, for increasing energy, alertness, and the like. The problem happened, when the cultures mixed and the western sciences took the compound in question to a new height.
Ultimately, drugs of any kind are a neutral force. Their primary use in the current paradigm is a tool for mitigating economic disparity among peoples most negatively affected by European dominance of the globe in the past 500 or so years. The other side of that coin unfortunately, is often the mass consumption by a society quite often devoid of any rigid and stable cultural norms due to the nature of it's growth and mixing and acquiring of other cultures.
The best of luck to any prospecting substance users, but more importantly, the best knowledge and level of preparedness. May you be well and discover new insights to enrich your life. And may you avoid the road that leads to the palace of wisdom, and find yourself amongst a more forgiving trail.