[Skybird]

Having come around a bit amongst hospital staff, escpecially clinical therapists, psychologists and doctors, I must say I still wait for the first person from these groups who would not frown when mentioning the possibility of legalizing heavy drugs in general. As my professor in psychopathology once put it, long years ago: "Why I am against legalising heroin for crime-related reasons only? For the same reason why I am against recommending people to inhale their car's emissions, or consume arsenic." Yes, I know there are projects experimenting with state-controlled distribution of heavy drugs, or surrogates. I also know the link between drug consummation and drug-related crime. But legalizing drugs because of that? No. At best strictly controlled projects where junkies sign in, accepting to be controlled and to be under strict surveillance, and then being assisted in de-contamination, resocialising - with a positive social prognosis as a precondition for being allowed into such a project. The unfortunate truth (that I expect many not to like to hear) is that there are many cases were all hope simply is lost. Such a project also (necessarily) means obligatory most fundamental changes in social settings, cutting of friendships, and drastic changes in living environments, to brake all contact to the former scene the junkie had known. This is most essential, since else the probability is extremely high his former "friends" will bring him down again.If needing to estimate a general value how many can be helped this way, how many really have a realistic chnace, remembering some experiences and talks from the past: at best one in five, I was told by the practicing staff - at best.Drugs destroy, killing families, body, and soul - slowly. Legalizing them in general for whatever well-meant reasons or crime-related considerations can in no way be ethically justified.