[froderick]

IME, human beings generally expect things that are true to be intuitive, and tend to interpret causality eagerly. The history of science is littered with folks that ended upon the wrong side of it because their intuition couldn't be rationalized (the earth _not_ being flat, for instance).

It doesn't surprise me that many countries will be very slow to change. Change would require citizens to invest in understanding the research and to recognize that the "obvious" solutions to drug addiction aren't necessarily the effective ones.