That spirit is still very much with us in the Anglosphere in a secular form on both the left and right (although in respect of different issues), which means what is claimed to work in Sweden or wherever has limited authority here. The fact is that most Canadians believe or intuit there is a connection between drug use and crime, prostitution,violence, etc., whether the drug use itself is legal or not. They intuit that drugs, like all vice, can be attractive to youth and that dissuasion should be practiced. And they intuit that somewhere, somehow, individual accountability plays a big role in both avoidance and recovery, whatever the sociologists say. Many conservatives and members of the decent middle understand the cruelty and futility of jail, and would prefer a more tolerant, compassionate approach, especially if it led to inspiring Horatio Alger recovery stories like in Wente’s article, but whenever they come across calls for the medical/harm reduction approach from the medical profession or social activists, they are soon made to feel they are boarding a runaway train heading for a place where their forebodings are defined as prejudice and everybody is responsible for the plight of the drug user except the drug user. I think they are searching for a way to make drugs legal while keeping them illicit. They don’t want drug users incarcerated or beaten up on the streets, but they don’t want then coddeld like sick children either. And they aren’t finding the solutions they seek because the beautiful people keep analogizing heroin addiction to measles. This, I believe, is also why efforts to legalize marijuana are always nipped at the post.

So yes, addiction is an individual medical issue. Except when it is a collective moral issue.

Canada’s criminal justice system doesn’t have the teeth to deal with dealers and addicts and the medical system is no less useless. The armies of Social(ist) Workers who follow the junkies around town seem more interested in creating more addicts (and jobs for themselves) than in solving the problem.

I like the Singaporean way:

Selling the stuff incurs the same penalty as first degree murder. If you’ve ever had a crackhead in the family (my uncle Bill died at 36, but not before robbing Grandma of everything she had) then you’ll understand why it is considered equivalent to first degree murder.

Addiction is a form of insanity. Addicts can be sent away for as much as four years mandatory rehab, and rarely get less than two years. The recidivism rate is less than one in a thousand.

Singapore has the lowest rate of drug use in the world, despite being a major port city in a drug producing part of the world. Low rates of drug related crime and disease go hand in hand with that. It is true harm reduction, unlike the free drugs and needles schemes favoured by the communists.

Chris