Viewing the drug problem from the perspective of health care is instructive: our laws against providing addicts with clean needles have increased the spread of AIDS, hepatitis C, and other blood-borne diseases. Since the purity and dosage of illegal drugs remains a matter of guesswork for the user, the rates of poisoning and overdose from drug use are unnecessarily high (as they were for alcohol use during Prohibition). Perversely, the criminal prohibition of drugs has actually made it easier for minors to get them, because the market for them has been driven underground. The laws limiting the medical use of opiate painkillers do little more than keep the terminally ill suffering unnecessarily during the last months of life.
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Page: 257
