““Every day in the United States about 130 people die of overdoses. Which is to say that every month you have the equivalent of a 9/11 happening. And when you consider the attention, alarm, public effort, mobilization of resources, nationwide determination that were evoked by 9/11, you have to wonder... why isn't a tragedy that 10 times as great, every year, why does that not elicit the same reaction, the same concern, the same sense of unity, the same determination to get to the bottom of it, the same desire to end it? Well, that's of course only a small part of the addiction story, because many more people die of alcoholism and cigarette-smoking, which are also addictions, which immediately raises an interesting question: why is it that the far more lethal addictions are actually respectable, advertised and superbowled, whereas other substances that are no more dangerous and, in the long term, medically not as harmful, they are illegal, and why are jails full of people who got addicted to the "wrong substance"? Now these are interesting questions and the answers are not to be found in conjecture or prejudice, you have to really examine them.””
