There are lots of things that you can do with a voluntary drug user that you can't possibly do with someone whose drug use is frequently out of control, who is truly compulsive. We make distinctions, both from a prevention point of view and from a treatment point of view. The relationship between drugs and crime is not a simple one. Using, selling, and having drugs is illegal. However, many people who are drug addicts go out and commit other kinds of crimes in order to secure the resources to keep their drug habit going.
Drug treatment is the most effective way to reduce the criminality associated with drug use.
The biggest story about drugs in the 1990s is methamphetamine . Methamphetamine is a sad, but fascinating phenomenon. It has passed across this country from the Southwest through the West into the Midwest like a public health plague. It began as an isolated phenomenon in southern California, and then the Southwest, and then it moved up the West Coast. And now the largest methamphetamine problems are in the middle of the country.