It is encouraging to read an article like Alicia Priest's "Middle Class Addicts" and feel like we may be starting to get a more straightforward and honest dialogue in the media about the significance of drugs and their place in our culture.

Market value is so absurdly inflated that it causes far greater suffering than simply that of the drugs to the users themselves, and there is a blind refusal to even entertain the notion of valid medical indications for drugs like cocaine or heroin. Most importantly, addict demonization plays out some of the ugliest tendencies in human nature when we adversely prejudge a distinct segment of the population and wind up burning some beautiful people at the stake.

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