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I’m the father of a recovering meth addict. There needs to be some criminality for use. It takes some form of detention keep them clean long enough to start their brain on a healing process, else they may never regain the ability to reason again. That said, I am not for letting them rot in prison with real criminals.

The right kind of rehab, with enough detention time and requirements to work, works better and, done right, is more cost effective in returning them to being productive citizens. But if they are determined to be a dopehead, long term incarceration, in some cases, may be the right answer. It is not a one-size fits all proposition, and sometimes corruption in the criminal justice system creates more problems than they solve.

Yours is a thoughtful reply. That is evident from your acknowledgment that "It is not a one-size fits all proposition, and sometimes corruption in the criminal justice system creates more problems than they solve."

I ask you to extend your analysis to answer this question, when do you take away the freedom of choice of the individual to abuse narcotics by labeling the very use a crime? I ask this because you seem to take both sides of the question. Some addicts, evidently your son, needed a moderate term of incarceration in a clinical facility to recover, such addicts, you quite rightly contend, are unlikely to recover absent such clinical intervention.

Note: the the forced intervention or incarceration in a clinical institution has to have some basis in law. Do you say that the mere act of consuming is that basis? Do you contend that only dealers should be incarcerated? If so, that rather vitiates the argument for rehabilitation of the users by incarceration or forced time in clinic.

Yet, for a chronic "dope head" you acknowledge that long-term incarceration, (does this mean jail time?) Is required. How do you oppose long-term incarceration for mere use? At what point do you say to the chronic addict, you are no longer the captain of your ship, you no longer have jurisdiction over your own body which we have granted to women to abort at will, we as the state are by force intervening in your life and we incarcerate you long-term in an institution, (presumably) for your own good?

I think you must answer the question, why do I not have the right to ruin my life by using drugs if that is my bent? Let us presume that I have committed no crime beyond using.

Finally, I think we both have to admit that addiction of an illegal substance virtually requires the user to become a pusher because of the economics inherent in the government rendering the trafficking drugs illegal.

What say you to that?

The will has to be involved and many are simply not at the place were they want to get off drugs. The false belief that they are bigger than the drug and it only happens to weaker people is throughout the drug using community. Including after seeing their friend die.