However well-intentioned the sympathies of progressives, reformers, doctors, and social workers, it would be reckless and mistaken to suppose we are dealing with a population of adults who can be left to fend for themselves. Drug addiction, like alcoholism, is real, not merely a temporary distraction, an excess of fun indulged by unruly adolescents while figuring out how to grow up in a morbidly narcissistic society. If addiction is a disease, possibly even in some sense genetic, as many claim, it is also an affliction of character disorder that arrests the full development of personality short of responsible adulthood. Growing up, recognizing and accepting responsibility, postponing immediate gratification for long term gains, is the first order of business for all recovering addicts. If there is one generalization that can be made about addicts, paroled or incarcerated, it is that, by and large, they cannot deal with life on the outs .
Rehabilitation is a tall order.
Though possible, this seems a doubtful solution. American taxpayers, unlike the Swiss or Dutch, simply cannot abide lay-about stoners. Already it is obvious we propose to solve a deluge of intractable problems with a flood of questionable, maybe untenable, solutions. Day Top Lodge, Synanon, and the rest, all claiming high cure rates and mysto-magical methodologies. It is mostly a tawdry legacy.