People all over the country are routinely treated with heroin (diamorphine) in a clinical setting. It is a very useful narcotic. If you've had nose surgery, eve

People all over the country are routinely treated with heroin (diamorphine) in a clinical setting. It is a very useful narcotic. If you've had nose surgery, even a simple corrective procedure, you've been treated with cocaine. None of these people leave the hospital craving drugs and looking to score. They do not become addicted. Addiction does not follow from treatment with narcotics. What you think of as harmful addiction follows from the junkie subculture created by criminalization The harmful effects of drug addiction are in fact a result of severe criminalization of narcotics. If you suffer from debilitating pain, you will go out of your way to suppress it. If no one will sell you pain killers legally, you will get them illegally. Indeed, if doctors could legally prescribe opiates for chronic pain sufferers, most of the illegal market would disappear. There would indeed be no crime. People in pain would get their medication for a few dollars and go on having normal lives. Calling these people addicts really is a way of ostracizing them, which only hurts people. True, they might be addicted to their medication. Their pain is now manageable too, really a fair trade off I think. Even more so when a daily dose costs just pennies.