>I don't take drugs but I believe everything except meth should be free, totally legal, and freely available to registered addicts.
Registered drug addicts being supplied drugs by the government? The government would be rightly accused enslaving millions of citizens through control of the drug supply. Addicts would be at the mercy of the government, and politicians would use this dependence to force addicts to do anything they want - for which they would have the full support of the rest of society. Need to reduce the cost of road construction? Tell the "registered addicts" that if they want their next heroin dose, they better get down there and pour some concrete - and they better do it before withdrawal starts kicking in.
Decriminalization is alright with me, but what you're proposing is the reinvention of slavery. It kind of reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.
All I can tell you is that in the US, such a program would be abused to the point of absurdity. We already use the "war on drugs" to create an army of millions of unpaid workers through various prison industries programs. We lock them up, then low security inmates are used for cheap manual labor outside their prisons by local businesses (yep, these programs are in place in a number of states). Higher security inmates work in metal and other shops built on prison grounds, but their work is exported to outside businesses.
In short, our government and the corporations that control it are far more evil and greedy than anything you would find in Switzerland. A program like this on US soil would in fact be turned into modern-day slavery, and because of the stigma associated with drug addiction, these abuses would be embraced and encouraged by the US populace.
We are all dependent on the government already, but have mechanisms to prevent such abuse. Couldn't the government aready threaten to close down all hospitals? Open up all prisons? But they dont.
Registered drug addicts being supplied drugs by the government? The government would be rightly accused enslaving millions of citizens through control of the drug supply. Addicts would be at the mercy of the government, and politicians would use this dependence to force addicts to do anything they want - for which they would have the full support of the rest of society. Need to reduce the cost of road construction? Tell the "registered addicts" that if they want their next heroin dose, they better get down there and pour some concrete - and they better do it before withdrawal starts kicking in.
Decriminalization is alright with me, but what you're proposing is the reinvention of slavery. It kind of reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.