Many of the illegal users are prescription drug users who lost their prescription.
It would be safer, cheaper and more effective to addicts as we treat the morbidly obese.
If an addict commits a crime, deal with the crime. That provides an opportunity to deal with the medical issue.
Addiction is just one of many human problems that solves itself over time.
Serious question:
Small bit of history: Decades ago, back when marijuana was illegal, a college student who wanted to buy some marijuana would not likely have had difficulty. You could approach people who “looked the part” and ask them if they could “help you out”. It just wasn’t difficult.
Modern scenario: I slip off a ladder and hurt my back. I go to my doctor. He prescribes Percocet (or whatever) and this addresses my back pain pretty well. But I get addicted. Where am I going to get my drugs? From my doctor? Not forever.
Maybe I’m just ignorant, but if I were to drive around my town “looking for a Percocet connection” I’d just never get anywhere. I would think that the average addicted person would just be forced to go “cold turkey” because you just can’t get the drugs. The average middle-class person may be susceptible to addiction, but I do not understand how the average middle-class person maintains a habit — except through a complicit medical profession.
What am I missing?
That’s not true. Only about 13% of opioid addicts were ever prescribed these drugs by their doctors. Opioids are effective at certain kinds of pain control, and people using them legitimately do not often become addicts.
The addicts started, many of them very young, through experimenting with drugs, encouraged by dealers, other users, and our entire culture, which glorifies drug use. (Surprisingly enough, Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign was effective, and many people have suggested renewing a similar campaign but one that is more graphic, such as the campaign that successfully reduced smoking in this country.)
And drug users are not “sick” and only in need of more treatment. Studies have shown that the rate of recovery is only about 30% for those who go through programs, and more than 50% of drug addicts who recover do so entirely on their own. Only they can decide to stop using, but they need the encouragement of society to do so, not blathering about how drug use is their right, rap songs about the wonderful world of drug selling and use, TV and Hollywood personalities staying stoned all the time, etc.