How can anyone, though, really say that what these people did was wrong; according to what flimsy, abstract concept can one say that the ingestion of dangerous substances, in accordance with the personal determinations allowed by natural liberty, is immoral? Perhaps instead of brutalizing these people we should try to help them; steel bars, after all, cannot release a person from a painful addiction; they can only serve to raise the level of pain experienced by the imprisoned
Imagine what would happen if all the money spent for twenty year, thirty year, and lifetime prison sentences was diverted towards education, prevention, and treatment. There lies the solution to the drug problem; not in brutality, but understanding; in a willingness to go beyond the immoral, simplistic, and ignorant response of torture and seek, through logical and reasonable methods, to end the proliferation of drugs and the terrible pain they cause. The solutions are not in bullets, but books.
Law results only in an inflation of both the monetary price of drugs and the social dangers resulting from their affects. Because drugs are illegal their cost is inflated to a level far beyond what their supply would normally dictate. Should drugs be legalized the prices would plummet and so all crimes related to drugs (i.e., crimes to obtain the money to buy them) would not have to be committed. The benefits from selling drugs would disappear with the extremely lower cost. In this case the law actually encourages crime by labeling something as illegal that should logically not be.
Again it seems that the only reason we punish drug offendors is because of anger. These people do not hurt us in any way; they hurt only themselves. There are, undoubtedly, some who believe that taking drugs is immoral and they are enraged when they see others violating their personal code of morality.