[palosanto]

"Fun fact! Some of the most commonly prescribed (and profitable!) sleeping pills are as addictive and dangerous as heroin. Meanwhile, the 'War on Drugs' continues."

Ladies and gentlemen: I present to you the U.S. national drug policy.

[dragonwriter]

While there are legitimate critiques of the War on Drugs, this seems to miss all of them: the notional reason that certain drugs are prohibited isn't that they are addictive and dangerous, but that they are addicted and dangerous and lack therapeutic use.

Drugs which are as addictive and dangerous as prohibited drugs but which have therapeutic uses for which there is not a superior substitute are supposed, by the logic of the system, to be legal. This "Fun fact!" neither points to any problem in the overt logic in the system, nor a way in which the effect of the system conflicts with the overt logic (there's plenty of both to be found, just not here.)