> As far as opioids and meth go, making them illegal has been an abject failure Because the emphasis has been on punishment not on treatment as a health proble

> As far as opioids and meth go, making them illegal has been an abject failure Because the emphasis has been on punishment not on treatment as a health problem. They have to be illegal if you want to be able to involuntarily hospitalize the users. Dealers of the addictive drugs should be punished (if they're not users and thus not addicted - if they're dealer/users they need to go through treatment first, punishment later if they continue to deal). If you live in the PDX area I don't need to tell you that our current system which relies on voluntarily submitting to treatment isn't working. Yes, mental illness plays a part, but in many cases it's tough to tell which came first: the mental illness or the drug use - the drug use makes the mental illness worse and the mental illness often leads to more drug use.