Millions of people are enjoying successful recoveries For example, among the ten percent of drinkers who at some point lose control there is a large, growing and influential recovery community. The gaps in the wisdom of our culture are wide. These hair shirt punishment freaks like Newt Gingrich and Orin Hatch have the public in such a state of fear that they forfeit their tolerance for an imagined protection from dope fiend crazies. The result has been the onset of totalitarianism. Of course we inmates know dictatorship already.
Imprisonment is the absolute violation of the self by institutionalized coercion.
The reasons for this use of force do not rely on any transcendental truth as far as we are concerned, but on naked compulsion claiming to be its own justification. So we now have what amounts to a religious war over psychoactive substances. Both sides fervently advance their version of revealed truth. The other side is not only mistaken, but evil. The stakes are immense and increasing for everyone involved.