Sometimes government can solve problems, other times it can't. Even in the case of obesity, the government at least tries to educate people. But addiction is no

Sometimes government can solve problems, other times it can't. Even in the case of obesity, the government at least tries to educate people. But addiction is not so similar to obesity, because it's much easier to monitor and control people's drug use through regulation than it is to monitor and control people's food intake. I think drug use is more like payday lending. Payday lending a shady industry, people who take advantage of it are often not too well off, and sometimes people make terrible decisions and screw up their lives, to the profit of the lenders. (or drug dealers.) But people are always going to want to borrow money for short periods of time just like people are always going to want to use drugs. No government policy is going to make everyone in the world happy, but we can try to minimize the number of miserable outcomes with some careful intervention.