Lee,

The answer to the health and societal cost of drugs is trivially simple, is based on standard principles of economics, and is well proven with analogues. Unfortunately, it seems to be ideologically unacceptable to most conservatives, but that's right wingers for you...

The solution is not prohibition (which creates scarcity, raises the price of drugs, encourages substitution by more "dirty" chemicals, encourages a criminal class of dealers, causes theft and crime as users try to find the extortionate amounts demanded for these products, and polarises society). As with alcohol and tobacco, the solution is for the government to be a key part of the production and distribution chain.

The role of government in the supply of goods is to (lightly) regulate purity standards, (lightly) oversee production facilites, charge a fair tax on the sale that covers societal and regulatory costs (including health care) and ensure that criminal elements and capitalists do not profiteer from the sale.

If the government certified the purity of drugs and approved their sale from clean and well-maintained premises (perhaps even supervised injection rooms, in the same way we have supervised drinking establishments), then 90% of the problems would be gone overnight.

There would still be people who abused drugs, as they abuse alcohol now. There would still be people with mental problems who got worse because of drugs, but so many of the shattered lives would be less affected, or even normal. And there would be (in a decent and caring society) medical outreach funded by the taxes on drugs - not police and troops warring on the sub-classes .