The Lie at the End of the Needle

"Yet while loathing and fearing addiction, many late-nineteenth-century people sympathized with addicts. They condemned the use of drugs for escape or sensual pleasure, but many people believed that addiction was a form of physiological slavery, which alleviated the user's guilt..." -H. Wayne Morgan, Yesterday's Addict

We have a problem in this country's attitudes towards drugs. We do condemn the drug, we condemn the drug dealer, we condemn the all-encompassing "drug trade", and we condemn the effects of drug use (prostitution, broken homes, crime, etc.). However, I rarely hear a condemnation of the root cause of all of those aforementioned things; the user.

There would be no drugs if there was not someone to use them. There would be no dealer is there was not a buyer. There would be no trade (or violence associated with it) if there was no consumer. There would be no adverse effects of drug use if there was no user.

We treat the addict as a victim of the drug. Since the addict is a victim of his or her own choice, the addict is not a victim at all. The addict is the culprit, the cause, the pathogen.

Condemn the user.