[api]

I fail to see how ruining peoples' lives with criminal convictions, records, and incarceration helps anyone in any case. Addiction is a psychological and medical problem.

The real insult is that alcohol is legal. Heavy alcohol use results in severe addiction and physical harm comparable to chronic heroin and amphetamine abuse. Yet we treat alcoholism as a psychological and a medical problem (which it is), and do not further ruin the addict's life and worsen their problems with incarceration and persecution.