Law's Response To Morality Often Fuels Society's Underground Currents

Every time society gets fed up, the same idea comes back with a fresh coat of paint. Just ban it. Ban alcohol. Ban drugs. Ban cigarettes. Ban gambling. Ban whatever people are doing that scares the public and embarrasses politicians. It sounds clean and tough because it is simple. It lets leaders look decisive and it lets communities feel like something is being done. The problem is that addiction and human demand do not respond to slogans. When the demand stays and the law tries to switch it off, the substance does not disappear. It moves into darker places, becomes more dangerous, and pulls more people into crime and shame.

Prohibition is often sold as a public health win, but it usually becomes a black market project. The losers are families, users, and communities. The winners are the people who are willing to supply anything, at any price, with no safety standards, no age limits, and no consequences beyond bribery and violence. That is why bans keep failing. They do not remove the behaviour. They remove control, safety, and early access to help.

Law cannot switch off human behaviour

Prohibition relies on a fantasy that fear is stronger than relief. It assumes that if you make something illegal, people will stop doing it because the punishment is scary. That can work for some behaviours, but it breaks down when you are dealing with substances that change the brain, relieve pain, dull trauma, or create dependence. A person who drinks to escape anxiety or who uses drugs to survive withdrawal is not weighing up a court date like a normal consumer. They are trying to get through the day.

It also assumes the supply chain will collapse. In reality, when demand is strong, the supply chain becomes more inventive. Prices rise, profits rise, and the market becomes attractive to organised crime. The substance becomes a commodity with a higher reward for risk. The ban becomes a business opportunity, and once money flows, corruption follows, because enforcement becomes something that can be bought.

Prohibition is not only about substances

Prohibition is often framed as morality and health, but it also becomes a tool of social control. Enforcement rarely lands evenly. Some neighbourhoods get raided, others get warnings. Some people get criminal records, others get a quiet favour. The law becomes selective, which fuels anger and distrust in communities that already feel targeted.

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, because people like to imagine law enforcement as neutral. In practice, prohibition often hits the poor harder, the young harder, and the marginalised harder. A criminal record does not just punish the person for using a substance, it punishes their future. It blocks jobs, it blocks travel, it damages families, and it can trap someone in the very environment that keeps them using.

If a policy claims to protect society but ends up producing more inequality, more unemployment, and more stigma, then it is worth questioning who the policy is really serving.

The predictable chain reaction

When a ban is enforced and demand stays, the same chain reaction repeats. Prices rise because risk rises. Quality drops because there are no standards. Products get cut with whatever is available. Violence increases because disputes are not settled in court, they are settled in back rooms and on street corners. Corruption increases because money is flowing and officials can be bought. Users take bigger risks because supply is unstable and because using becomes a secret activity done in unsafe environments.

Prohibition does not remove the substance. It removes safety. It removes regulation. It removes early intervention. It removes the ability to say I need help without risking arrest or humiliation. In that space, addiction grows quieter and more dangerous, because secrecy is fuel.

How prohibition turns people into outcasts

Stigma is one of the most effective tools prohibition creates. When a substance is illegal or socially taboo, users do not become less human, they become more hidden. Families stop talking. Partners cover up. Parents look the other way until it becomes impossible. People avoid clinics and counselling because they fear judgement and exposure.

Stigma also changes how people relapse. When someone believes relapse means they are disgusting or weak, they often hide it. Hidden relapse becomes full relapse. Full relapse becomes crisis. Crisis becomes police, ambulances, and trauma for everyone around them. If you want fewer deaths and fewer broken homes, you need earlier help, not later punishment. A policy that makes people afraid to ask for help is not a health policy, it is a silence policy.

The deeper lesson from tobacco

South Africa has deep inequality, high unemployment, and huge informal trade networks. That reality matters. In a country like this, bans create opportunity for exploitation, because people are desperate for income and because underground trade is already part of daily survival in many communities.

When the state bans something that millions of people still want, it does not remove the demand, it creates a new income stream for people willing to break the law. That includes opportunists, gangs, and organised networks. It also includes ordinary people who are trying to survive, who get pulled into illegality because the market rewards it.

The cost is not only revenue loss. It is social trust. When people learn that bans are easily bypassed, they lose faith in policy, and they become more cynical about government motives. That cynicism matters when the next public health crisis arrives, because cooperation depends on trust.

The endless war on drugs

The war on drugs was sold as a way to protect communities. In many places it became a way to fill prisons and grow criminal networks. Harsh punitive approaches rarely reduce drug use in a meaningful way over time. What they do is push supply into more violent hands, push users into riskier behaviour, and create cycles of arrest and release that destroy stability.

A person arrested for drug use does not come out of prison healthier. They come out with a record, less employable, more traumatised, and often more connected to criminal networks than before. Families suffer, children suffer, and communities carry the burden while drug markets adapt and continue.

Punishment also blocks treatment. When people fear arrest, they avoid healthcare settings. When drug use is treated as a moral failure, mental health drivers get ignored. When policy focuses on punishment, funding often follows punishment, and treatment services stay under resourced. The result is predictable, the problem continues and the human cost grows.

Decriminalisation and harm reduction

The moment you say decriminalisation or harm reduction, people think you are approving of drug use. That is the emotional reaction, and it is understandable. Nobody wants more drugs in their community. But decriminalisation is not approval, and harm reduction is not surrender. It is a shift from pretending you can erase demand, to reducing death, disease, and violence while pushing people toward treatment.

A health first approach focuses on keeping people alive long enough to change. It focuses on reducing overdose deaths, preventing disease spread, and creating pathways into care that do not require someone to become a criminal first. It also allows police to focus on violent crime and trafficking rather than wasting resources on users who need treatment.

People hate these ideas because they feel like being soft, but the truth is that prohibition has not been tough on drugs, it has been tough on families.

Banning a substance is not banning addiction

Addiction is not only a chemical relationship. It is a behavioural relationship with relief. If you remove one substance, the behaviour often seeks another outlet, alcohol, pills, gambling, compulsive sex, binge eating, or any pattern that gives quick relief from discomfort. That is why prohibition is limited. It focuses on the object rather than the mechanism.

If society wants real change, it has to deal with drivers, trauma, depression, violence, unemployment, shame, and the breakdown of family support. That is harder than banning something, and it does not look as dramatic on a podium, but it is where the real leverage is.

Personal freedom versus public harm

Governments do have a duty to protect public health and reduce harm. Communities do have a right to safety. The question is which tools actually deliver those outcomes. Prohibition often creates more public harm through crime, unsafe supply, and stigma that blocks help. Regulation, education, and treatment access often deliver better outcomes over time because they keep the problem in the light where it can be managed.

This is not about being permissive. It is about being honest about how humans behave, and choosing strategies that reduce suffering rather than pretending to eliminate it with law.

Prohibition debates will continue, but addiction does not wait

Prohibition feels tough, but it often makes addicts invisible and criminals rich. It pushes problems underground and then acts surprised when violence and corruption grow. If you want fewer deaths and fewer broken homes, you need approaches that reduce harm and increase access to treatment, while still holding people accountable for behaviour that harms others.

If you are dealing with addiction in your home, do not wait for society to solve the policy argument. Get a proper assessment and a clear treatment plan. We Do Recover can guide you toward the right level of care, whether that means a safe detox plan, structured inpatient treatment, or a combination of professional support and community based recovery. Guessing and waiting are how families lose years, and sometimes they lose more than years.