This study looks at the damage caused by prohibitionism and the bloody war on drugs, versus the policy of harm reduction, by analyzing the individual drug user and the reasons that led them to come into contact with narcotics. This study will show that drug addiction is currently a social pathology, mainly due to the lack of happiness among people and the search for pleasure at any cost, imposed by a merciless and oppressive consumer society, which imposes unattainable standards and status, which ends up frustrating individuals, who turn to drugs as a means of escape from the oppressive reality. By correlating the effects that drugs have on the rates of violence and crime, it is possible to see the close relationship between them. Drug abuse has an impact on both society and the legal world. Faced with so much damage caused by prohibitionism, alternative control measures are needed, including the models of decriminalization and legalization of drugs.