Trying to keep my own family off the street with a roof over their head and food on the table is extremely hard and stressful...I don't have enough energy left over to worry about people that have never made one smart decision in their lives and have burned every bridge with all their friends and relations...sorry...life is tough.

We are responsible for protecting those who are in need of protection. Those who are a danger to themselves need to be protected from themselves, as sanctioned by the Mental Health Act.

If you're suggesting interning addicts in mental wards, there's no budget nor justification for that. The danger is not the drug addiction; the danger is the tainted drug supply. Prohibition has created an extremely dishonest "addiction services" industry that uses junkies and former junkies, many of whom have a real developmental disability, often FAS/FASD, to front the idea that "drugs cause a downward spiral." This is bullshit. Plenty of people, some for most of their adult lives, some for a portion of it, party on the weekends. Heck, loads of people go to work on legal pharmaceuticals, many of which have the same pharmacological action as the "drugs of abuse"---amphetamine is a legal Rx medication.

Drug prohibition inordinately increases the harms associated with drug use, and there is simply no way to interdict fentanyl. A gram of fentanyl = 1 million micrograms, or about 10,000 doses at 100ug each. So an envelope with 15 grams of fentanyl contains 150,000 doses. You're not going to open every envelope that weights 15 grams, nor 30 grams. Fentanyl is here to stay, interdiction won't help, and the quaint idea that you could intern addicts (even if it were ethical, there's no way the budget could support such action) is not really worth considering. The suggestion pegs you as someone out of his depth, quite frankly.

As for the poster who says he has enough to worry about, addiction is not a matter of not making "smart decisions." At the Vancouver City Hall tonight, we heard from a mother whose son was put on legal pain medication for a back injury, then fired as a patient when he told his doctor he was abusing the drugs. He got clean, but relapsed (after doctor shopping) and overdoses on a legal drug cocktail.

We need to stop being naive. We need to implement a full-scale harm-reduction strategy that includes legal, regulated doses of the drugs people use.

Drug use is a personal choice, and it is not necessarily a choice lacking in smarts. Many smart people have used drugs. Coleridge, Jerry Garcia, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Anias Nin, Cary Grant, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Robert Hunter, the list goes on and on.

Drug prohibition does not protect anything but money for nothing for dealers.

Actually, the solution to the issue is to stop being a junkie!!!~!!!!!! You get on your high horse and chastise everyone because they are not doing anything to make your life as a junkie more pleasurable. You say that prohibition and doctors are a "dangerous experiment" that kill people?? What the hell do you think being a junkie does?????
Here's the bottom line from a former junkie. BEING AN ADDICT IS A CHOICE. It may not be a conscious choice, but it is a choice. If you want to give over the power of your life to a drug, THAT IS YOUR CHOICE. Just as being a former junkie will never happen until you make the CHOICE to stop being a junkie. You might say that nobody cares, but is making it easy to be a junkie caring????? Let's call it tough love!!!