> If you prescribe heroin to addicts, a large proportion of them become productive members of society. Prescribing is incredibly inexpensive, because heroin is in fact a very cheap drug - it's expensive on the streets because of prohibition.
So you are saying if people get addicted to heroin... give them free heroin indefinitely until they decide to stop (or die of old age)? Why pay for it if your healthcare covers it? Why not extend it and prescribe alcohol to alcoholics and nicotine to smokers?
Well I have a friend addicted to heroin. He tried it once, for fun, and was blown away by how good it made him feel. So he tried it again to achieve the same feeling, and again, and eventually it consumed him. He comes from a good family as far as I know, and just made some poor choices under peer pressure.
> Why not extend it and prescribe alcohol to alcoholics and nicotine to smokers?
You can buy alcohol and tobacco legally and relatively inexpensively. Substitute prescribing allows addicts access to a safe supply of drugs without creating a free-for-all. Substitute prescribing massively reduces the cost to society of drug addiction, for the reasons mentioned in my comment.
If alcohol was illegal, people were being killed by bathtub gin and people were burgling houses to fund their addiction, I'd suggest prescribing alcohol.
So you are saying if people get addicted to heroin... give them free heroin indefinitely until they decide to stop (or die of old age)? Why pay for it if your healthcare covers it? Why not extend it and prescribe alcohol to alcoholics and nicotine to smokers?