Who doesn't like to feel good?

Tony Newman has a good piece up at Alternet on the top ten things he's learned about drugs. The single most important point he makes is the last.

We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren't going anywhere.

It's a point I make often but it's worth reviewing now and again. If we regulated drugs according to their death toll, aspirin would be illegal and marijuana would be freely grown. I don't feel like looking up the figures but I'd bet there are many pharmaceutically prescribed drugs that have killed more people than heroin.

Humans always have and always will instinctively search for ways to alter their mood, whether to alleviate pain or accentuate pleasure, even as a cat will search out catnip in the garden.

We wouldn't lock up the cat for loving the catnip, heck we pay big bucks for dumb toys filled with it, so why do we lock up humans for seeking the same relief from a natural plant?