Here in NM, the substance of choice is black tar heroin. Purity is never known and accidental overdoses are common. In other areas, people get their hands on Fentanyl and don't realize how much stronger it is than heroin. Some people out there undoubtedly commit suicide when their lives have spun out of control and there is no help.

Ending the damned drug war and the black market along with it would drop the number of deaths from opiate overdose considerably. We know this because of the experiment in England that registered hard core addicts and gave them reliable doses of their drug of choice.

Setting up treatment programs will help, but the UK experiment had the best cure rate of anything ever tried: after the 10 years when the program ended (Tories were in power and DEA didn't like it), 50% of those addicts considered hopeless at the beginning of the program had tapered themselves off the drugs completely.

Now that more of Nixon's evil has been declassified, we know the reason behind the ill considered, wasteful and futile War on Drugs. It's high time we tried something else.

I am at least happy to see a step forward away from a failed policy. We see the good President Obama in this piece, not the one who supports free trade, NSA spying and drone wars.

Thank you for bringing up the UK experiment. What I had in mind as I watched the segment was Michael Moore's expose about drug policy in Portugal in Where to Invade Next? However, like most things in that movies, the corporatists in both parties will tell us that we can't afford that and fight wars for oil and keep taxes on the rich low at the same time.

fight between his love for the drug and his love for his family. He is in treatment and fortunately wants to quit or at least I think he does. He is actually ashamed of who he is when he is using. Treatment should be long term and there should be a way of keeping the user in treatment as long as they show some progress in their lives. Unfortunately now if you get caught using you are out.

Thank you for the info on the other countries.

One thing no one seems to mention in this fight is the children. My grandson is the son of an alcoholic and now he has a son and a daughter that are seeing the problem all over again - just with a different drug. These children have both a mother and their father who are addicted to opiates. We need to talk about how to stop that next generation from becoming the next generation.

We have counselors that are helping but this is a real problem. My daughter has custody of them and they live with their father and at least his daughter knows what is going on. We also work with their mother in that we make sure she gets to see them if she shows up. Mom was also the child of a using family. There is more to this than just one man or one woman.

We desperately need some answers here. I am glad they are beginning to talk about it.

research on them and see how it effected the children.

See my reply to Warpy.

In the UK, they found during their trial that street crime dropped by 80% and that most addicts showed up for work once they didn't have the pressure of meeting black market prices.

I'd like to see the drug war ended and long term treatment offered to anyone who wants to quit.

And yes, my family was scarred by alcoholism. People in my extended family have tended to die of it.

immediate family. But that is partly because the next generation has turned to other drugs.

And also a lot of the family has actually escaped the generational trap. I just worry about the little ones. They love their mom and their dad. We are just hoping that they love will not cause them to follow them down the old path.

The original plant derived drugs are all safer for body systems than either alcohol or nicotine.

It's only the bathtub chemistry drugs like meth, bath salts, krokodil and the others that are an attempt to get around the drug laws that are more damaging to body systems than alcohol or nicotine.

screw this. More drug wars?

There is nothing wrong with opiates unless you have an addictive personality.

Otherwise, this is a real boon for the pharm companies.

Just f-ing great.