Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSquealer
This is actually a fascinating problem. In rats for example, you can demonstrate the addictive nature of cocaine as they'll choose coke over food and water until they lose consciousness and die. This is the very problem with addition... that the problem is not at all about decision making, its about an inability to make good decisions.
However, if you put the junkie into prison who stole a car stereo and he's not used for 6 months, then there is no addiction. He then has to make the conscious choice to go back to using drugs.
The other problem is that you can't treat addiction when the addicted person isn't ready to quit and desperately wanting treatment. Even then, the success rates for successfully treating addiction under ideal circumstances are very low.
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Treating addiction is never easy and is often a long, frustrating problem for all involved. Here's the issue with just putting them in jail. First, people can get drugs in jail. Second, let's assume they don't and they serve their six months and are clean and sober when they are released. That's great, but without treatment they don't have any skills or knowledge of how to stay sober. Half of sobriety is figuring out the things that trigger you and learning how to deal with or avoid them. I would argue the person who is clean after 6 months will be back to using drugs very soon. With no job, a prison record, and an addiction issue, it's going to be hard for them to get a job. Most of them just fall right back in with the crowd they were with before when they got in trouble. Hence, the reason most people who go to jail end up back in jail because we don't teach them how to stay out of jail.
I'm not suggesting we just everyone do whatever they want and punish nobody. I am suggesting that we look at people who break the law and try to decide what is causing them behave that way then while we punish them we also teach them to be better people.