Street Pharm Heaven

San Francisco has a long-standing history of tolerance for drug use. But after all the groovy peace and love folks realized they had to pay rent (or died from their experiments), we're left with a phalanx of hardcore addicts hanging out on the street corners. So much for liberal ideals. Sure, we can tolerate their bedraggled visage, but is that what's best for them and us? At the federal level, we simultaneously have restored Afghanistan as opium production capital, while maintaining various enforcement gauntlets that effectively keep prices high. Apparently maintaining jobs for law enforcement and pipeline payola profits is a federal imperative. If we eliminated the bureaucratic enforcement pay-offs, would drug prices and crime decrease? Probably not -- it would probably be the same deal recording companies maintained as they went from vinyl, to CDs, to digital distribution. Savings passed on to consumers? Ha. Even if legalized and regulated, a new bureaucracy would spring up to siphon off what were once illicit "profits." Three cheers for the status quo?