These days, popular musicians, household-name athletes, and even powerful politicians, are using their uh, high ranks to argue for the legalization of marijuana.

And everywhere we turn, we're likely to hear people arguing about whether the gateway drug for some, and cure for others, should be legalized. In some places in the world, it’s totally okay to use cocaine, while in other places, even caffeine is illegal. Which drugs are totes legit and which ones should we outlaw?

The thing is, the debate isn't new, because drugs have been central to the American experience from the very beginning.

Christopher Columbus' very first encounter with the natives of the "New World" ended with an exchange of gifts, in which the Indians graciously presented their European visitors with a supply of a powerful and popular local drug: tobacco. Columbus had no idea what he was supposed to do with the unfamiliar dried leaves, and ended up chucking them overboard. 

But his men soon learned from the Indians the joys of smoking, and carried the habit back with them to Europe. Soon, Europe became a continent of nicotine addicts. Newsflash: it still is.

A century later, tobacco rescued the first English colony in North America from the verge of collapse. Yes, we went there. 

See, the first five years of the Jamestown settlement—founded in Virginia in 1607—were disastrous: settlers died off and failed to develop any crops that could be sold at a price high enough to sustain the colony. The remaining live ones were on the brink of getting the heck out of there when John Rolfe rolled up. Pocahontas' husband planted a field of tobacco in 1612, and the crop sold in London a year later for a huge profit. Soon, Jamestown grew little else besides tobacco. 

And without the proceeds from the international drug trade in tobacco, the first sustained English settlement in North America would've failed, and the United States as we know it may never have come to exist.

Yes, we went there.

Since then, drugs have made a major impact on American history. Even as drugs, legal and otherwise, have contributed to the growth of the nation's economy, Americans have struggled to find policies that limit drugs' negative effects on society without generating negative side-effects of their own.

But just because drugs have always been part of the U.S., doesn't mean we think drugs are good, obvi. Because as long as there have been drugs, there has been a drug problem, too.

Most drugs were totally legal in the 19th century.

And we're not just talking about legalized marijuana. We're talking opium and heroin, some of the most insanely addictive and powerful stuff out there. Yeah, you might as well widen your eyes now to save time, because you have a one-way ticket to Drugsville, U.S.A.

So, let's be real: drugs are a major problem in American life. But that's not a new problem.

Since the very first day Columbus landed in the New World, when the Taino Indians presented him with a gift of tobacco, which would go on to become—for better or worse, but mostly worse—one of the most important drugs in our history.

As we mentioned, drugs have existed since the beginning, so have drug problems, and so have attempts to solve those drug problems. As we face our own drug problems, we can learn something from those past attempts.

• How did it turn out when an English king tried to convince his people to stop smoking by writing a tract called A Counterblaste to Tobacco?
• How did it turn out when another English king tried to ban coffeehouses?
  How did it turn out when the United States passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting all drinking of alcohol?

Let's just say the public was hesitant to put down their lighters, their mugs, and their hard stuff. Whether our history can help you to help us develop a better set of policies to deal with America's drug problem in the future, is up to you.

But this topic sure sounds addicting to us, so let's get into it before we go into withdrawal.