Drugs have been in use since before history. Most drugs were discovered to be natural products of plants and good; and if prescribed by health care specialists such as doctors, they were helpful for those suffering disease and maladies of body and mind.
There has always been a subculture of drug enhanced life. It has been around since the opium pipe was institutionalized in the orient. Opium dens were legal and the availability of the drug was cheap so that only those hooked on its use were involved. There was no paraphernalia of police, snitches and raids. The poor souls who were coaxed into its use were actually few and harmed no one but themselves; they were the victims. Making drug use ILLEGAL made it profitable, generated a whole culture of for and against drug use and ruined many lives.
“Illegal” drug use today is commercialized and is a huge business enterprise that has gone beyond raising poppies to chemical laboratories where new “designer drugs are invented and the whole process in the moral western world is unlawful with users and pushers sent to jail while new ones pop up with great regularity.
By contrast, addictive drugs are available cheaply in Mytopia. If someone wants to become a crack head or whatever, that is his or her choice. Smoking cigarettes is a drug of choice and you don’t go to jail (at least not yet) because you blow your second hand smoke where others are bothered by it. Making drug use against the law is the problem. In Mytopia there are no laws against production of drugs for medical use. The makers of drugs to help are strictly regulated to save lives. Drugs that induce stupor or “highs” are legal but are cheap because the Mytopian government makes availability easier than in the criminal transactions taking place every moment everywhere else.
No one wants to be homeless. In the same way, no one wants to be made useless and dependent. Yet, because it is against social norms there are those who rebel and seek a lifestyle which leads to criminal behavior. Take crime out of it and those who are swept up in drug use should be left alone. That is their choice. Education is better than punishment here. The moralists who want conformity of belief and behavior are asked to stay in their houses of worship and leave the rest of us alone.
Mytopia is a good place in which to live and work. There are plenty of choices and you don’t HAVE to be one thing or another. As water seeks its own level, people will find their own niches and if left alone they will probably get along.