> the answer to harm minimisation is not legal recreational opiates Right but be careful: "the answer... is not legal recreational opiates" does not necessaril

> the answer to harm minimisation is not legal recreational opiates Right but be careful: "the answer... is not legal recreational opiates" does not necessarily imply that the answer is illegal recreational opiates. If that's what you are suggesting: I am unconvinced. Has a war on drugs ever actually worked for us? Is it clear that legal opiates would mean more overdoses? Even if they would, has someone done a cost-benefit analysis of a) enforcing the illegality of the drug and b) efforts to reduce the negative effects of the drug through education about the risks of using and how to use responsibly. I'd be curious to see the results. Edit: According to http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Economics http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Economics (pardon the biased domain but it was the first search result with the answer), only 5% of the money the US spends on drugs is allocated toward prevention and 37% goes to treatment. The remaining 58% goes to enforcing the illegality of drugs. Clearly the enforcement is not very effective because as you mentioned elsewhere 16k people are dying a year from heroin. So the question is: would that money be better spent otherwise?