One of my favorite films, “Requiem for a Dream,” brutally shows the moral and physical devastation that drug addiction causes. The film’s protagonists face dire consequences for their addictions: imprisonment, paranoid schizophrenia, prostitution and bloody amputation.

The movie shows what is most obvious about drugs: They devastate users’ bodies and moral sense. However, it omits the huge social cost of drug abuse.

Any rational human being would agree that the purpose of a government is to protect its citizens from threats to their safety, both internal and external ones. Citizens have the right to feel that their property and well-being are unmolested. The statistics speak for themselves.

Over one-fourth of victims of violence claim that their offenders were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Drug users are responsible for two-fifths of violent crimes committed against college students. The National Highway Traffic Administration, meanwhile, estimates that between 10 and 22 percent of all crashes are caused by drugged drivers.

Drug abusers not only threaten the safety of millions of innocent citizens, but also increase the tax money they pay to fix the social problems caused by drug abuse.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that the United States pays nearly $500 billion annually for health care, law enforcement and treatment costs drug abuse incurs. Wouldn’t it be nice if that tax money could instead be spent on improving the public education system, for example?

The Netherlands, the utopian paradise of secular leftists, has long been famous for its “tolerant” policy on drugs. Yet even the “open-minded” Dutch are tightening laws, as crime and health care costs relating to drugs skyrocketed.

These problems appeared not only in Holland, but also in nearby Belgium and France, as many citizens of those countries drove to the Netherlands, bought drugs and came back home to rob, harrass and spread diseases.

Americans should learn from the mistakes of the Dutch and continue their “no tolerance” policy for drugs. While many criticize the War on Drugs that the United States has been waging since the Reagan era, I have no doubt it is at least partially responsible for the fact that the country’s crime rate has plummeted in the past three decades.

All governments should educate young people to be morally upright participants in civic democracy.

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