Drug abuse is a really big problem in our society and especially the western world is getting more and more affected by drugs and the side effects young people face every single day. Even though we have distinctions between hard drugs and the softer kind, they all pretty much fall into one category in the sense that they are virtually gateways to each other and once you have tried one of them it becomes more acceptable for you to try the others.
What originally leads a lot of people into drug abuse is their curiosity for the effects of drugs or trying to deal with the struggles of their everyday life. In either case it is never a good idea to abuse drugs and start delving into a world that can potentially lead to you losing control over your life. Even though I believe that people who are extremely aware of the mechanisms of their brain and their emotions can control the use of drugs, 99% of people run the risk of becoming drug abusers when they first step into this scary world.
What is really deceiving about drugs like cocaine and ecstasy is that you won't see any effects of your health worsening on the outside initially and this leads a lot of young people to think they are invincible or that they will never be the victim of injury as they "know what they are doing". The biggest risk with drugs other than their side effects is related to the types of drugs that are chemically created. These drugs are being created on all sorts of underground labs all around the world and you never know what ingredients these people have actually put in the drugs.
There has been countless reports of rat poison and the likes being found in some of these drugs and there have been many busts where the conditions of these underground labs are revealed. They are definitely not sanitary to say the least. The best thing you can do is to never give yourself permission to delve into this scary world and just stay away from drugs. Even if they do give you a short term sense of happiness, it is a false one and at some point in time you have to come back to your own life again. Therefore it is better to just work on improving your life instead of hiding behind drugs.