Pricing, delivery and taxation could be manipulated to eliminate sellers' profits and create lower costs to users, so they don't have to rob people to finance their habits. Advertising could be prohibited for vices, while buyers are still permit access to what they are going to get anyway. Packaging for such products could include information about treatment programs. While addicts might just ignore these most of the time, the information would be ready when the addict cried out for help. Minimization requires a commitment to rehabilitation services for all users when they are ready, without waiting lists.
Dollars spent on prevention are cheaper than dollars spent for a cure.
Substance abuse must be treated as a medical and social problem, not a criminal-justice problem. Such products could continue to be marketed, but advertising and conditions of sale could be restricted while information and resources could be directed toward voluntary prevention and increased access to treatment and cure. And, as noted by Robert Matano of Laguna Niguel in his correspondence to Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico, bringing the distribution of drugs out into the open would expose distributors to the same kind of legal accountability if their marketing, promotional efforts or methods of distribution fail to comply with practices of law and adequate disclosure to consumers in the same way that lawsuits are now holding tobacco companies liable for intentional deceit in their marketing practices. For those who are uncomfortable with the idea of equating a cigarette or glass of wine with crack cocaine, minimization strategies could recognize differing classes of vices. The same concept could even be adapted for and extended to behavioral vices, such as prostitution and gambling.