I think so. I mean, you're not off base; I understand that this is a suggestion people often make. But I don't think it's very productive. I think it's a very expensive suggestion, and we could deal with the problem in other ways.
If you're a heroin addict and you're stealing.... Look at the NAOMI project that Martin Schechter and his colleagues at UBC conducted for three years. They found significant improvement in the psychological and economic functioning of the participants when they were prescribed heroin. These weren't people who were just randomly given heroin; these were intractable addicts who had failed at methadone, who had failed at virtually every conceivable possibility. In fact, there were so many restrictions in the program that it was difficult to get people involved, but what the program revealed was that there is a different and a better way of responding to heroin addiction than using the criminal law.