Ex-addicts could clean up and get a decent factory job.
 

Also: drug addiction has relatively little to do with the pharmacological properties of the drugs themselves; the most relevant determinant of drug addiction is whether or not your life is fucked.

The best evidence for this is the post-conflict statistics for heroin users after Viet Nam: less than 1% remained long-term addicts, and those who did were almost exclusively men whose lives deteriorated on their return (often, but not always, due to PTSD).

The cultural situation in the US actively .- and aggressively - undermines ex-convicts' efforts to rehabilitate and improve their lives; as such it actively - and aggressively - contributes to drug-addiction relapses and a continuation of the addict's downward spiral.

Alienation, social isolation, poverty and malformed social relationships are the primary drivers: the quest to radically alter one's brain chemistry is an attempt at self-medication. If it manifests as drinking 5 glasses of bourbon a night, nobody gives a shit if you do your job... but if it manifests as a joint you can get fired six weeks later after a workplace drug test

That's even true for opioid addiction: the fact that a lot of addicts start with a prescription for physical pain, doesn't alter the fact that their first oxy experience is probably the first time in their lives that they experience a euphoric relief from their grinding lives... most opioid addicts are already part of an underclass.

By contrast, and with the caveat that anecdotes are not statistical evidence... The Lovely was prescribed Endone - oxycodone - for post-surgery pain 3 years ago: she used 1 tablet (half one day, half the next), and we still have the other 11, My Dad had the same prescription after falling off a ladder and busting his shoulder: he still has 10 of his prescription (he's twice as big as The Lovely).

Both of them marvelled at how good it made them feel - but neither of them were remotely interested in recapturing the feeling 'on the daily' because their lives are already mostly-happy. (When I mentioned this to a mate of mine who is a former addict - and still regular drug user - his eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas: apparently they're $40 a pill on the street).

It's not rocket surgery: this shit has been known for about half a century outside the US (the 'Rat Park' study in the 1970s/80s was actually performed in Canada).

A big part of the problem is that Yanks have an ingrained holier-than-thou sanctimony - so much so that they're comfortable with the idea that any non-trivial felony conviction can fuck up your life for a decade or more after you're supposed to have 'paid your debt' to society: in some states, things like electoral voting rights are lost for life, as a result of any felony conviction.

Guess what's most likely to make people abandon support for that sort of stupid, sanctimonious shit? Seeing the aftermath when a family member gets a felony conviction. Then I people start to understand why people agitate for humane treatment - so instead of deriving from pretty basic humanity, their support derives from the zeal of the converted.

Replies: @Anonymous, @M. Rogers

Replies: @M. Rogers, @Anonymous, @Ragno