I can relate my own experience with heroin addicts. In one apartment building I lived in, we had one family move in with one heroin addict in it. For the other fourty some units, life became hell. Every other week we could expect to have multiple breakins in the underground parking lot. Now, perhaps most heroin addicts don't turn into B & E artists, but even if its a small percentage that do, that's enough to reek disproportionate havoc.MSimon wrote:I really hate injecting reality into such an interesting discussion but if you want numbahs (vs free floating and unconnected to reality fiction) the numbers on this page are representative. (the policy prescriptions are nuts - but they have their phony baloney jobs to protect)
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/pub ... t/druguse/
Let us look a stats for 2001 (they are representative)
Past month pot use:
12 - 17 yos - 8.0%
18 - 25 yos - 16.0%
26 - 34 yos - 6.8%
35 and up - 2.4%
Now it seems to me that if we do nothing the desire to use declines with age. Naturally.
I'm not going to look up a link (you can do that) but the same thing happens with heroin. Every year without rehab 5% of the users give it up. Fortunately rehab is much more successful. With rehab 5% a year give it up. The one thing rehab has going for it is that it is 7X cheaper than the prison industrial complex. So if we are going to be stupid I say lets do it on the cheap.
If you want to whine about they're all victims of trauma, how about the trauma they inflict on non users. Buy the way, the other fourty units, all laidback liberal Vancouverites, finally all voted to employ the Chinese solution to our drug problem if the guy didn't leave. So maybe rehab is 7x cheaper, but for the problem addict prison is the only humane cost effective solution, both for the addict and his victims.