I had a whole 'nother response typed out but my computer ate it. Hopefully it won't magically appear and duplicate this one.

amenhotep started this thread with the question, Are we to blame? In the movie, Blow, about the fellow who thinks he got the cocaine epidemic started, the protagonist says, "When actors and musicians accept it, the rest of the people will follow." That's where the epidemic comes from, and the Mafia is just responding to it.

I'm all for unmarginalizing addicts, once they stop using drugs. But I don't think you're doing them any favors by telling them it's not their fault.

I'm curious about the mechanism for making all these drugs legal, cheap, and available for anybody who wants them. Most doctors prescribe drugs for people who do something to earn the right to use them, like by getting injured or sick. Some of them doctors might be loath to prescribe powerful drugs to somebody who just wants to try them for the fun of it. Are doctors just supposed to eat the liability they face after prescribing recreational drugs to people, just because they want them?

In alanbit's heroin scenario, the junkie is supposedly no threat once he gets his fix. So you wouldn't mind being next to a heroin junkie. Well, how about a tweaking meth freak? Or somebody whacked out on LSD? Or some new analog that turns them into raging psychopaths. Or something like ecstasy that slowly destroys their brains. Drugs work, they alter people significantly. That's why they're controlled. That's why doctors administer them; to counteract the effects of some condition deemed more detrimental than the effects of the drug.