General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A telling phenomenon: the absent outrage over Phillip Seymour Hoffman's criminality [View all]hunter
(40,805 posts)Drug addiction is a public health problem, not a problem for the law to deal with.
Make treatment easily available to everyone, along with supervised dispensation of quality, pharmaceutical drugs if necessary.
If we did this, much crime would evaporate and tragedies would be rare. If drug addiction was treated as a chronic disease rather than a crime patients would have no incentive at all to deal with criminals. How many people are buying unsourced, unlabled beer in two liter pop bottles from sketchy street corner dealers this Super Bowl weekend?
But there is too much money in it for the authoritarians, the bankers, and the criminals they associate with. Drug "enforcement" is used as an excuse to harass and imprison certain classes of people, to collect and launder money from criminals, etc., etc..