Read the history of Chinese drug addiction during the time of The Opium Wars of the 1830s.
The British government fostered a dramatic expansion of opium use and addiction in China, where the use of opium was legal, in order to wrest political and trade concessions from the Chinese government. Before this British sponsored program was begun, the use of opium was limited.
The Chinese government launched a vigorous campaign to clean up the opium dens and arrest British merchants involved in the trade. In this, the Chinese government had tremendous success.
The British then began an aggressive military action to enforce their will on the Chinese government. When Chinese naval craft attempted to intercept British merchant ships carrying the drug they were fired on by British naval vessels. Eventually, the British invaded China and inflicted the most humiliating military defeat on China in it's entire history.
Among the many concessions wrung from the Chinese government by the Treaty of Nanking was the right to try British nationals guilty of breaking Chinese laws, (in effect, guaranteeing that such nationals escaped punishment by Chinese officials), and the legitimization of the opium trade and the public use of the drug.
In the years after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking opium use among the Chinese population TRIPLED. Almost an entire generation of China's young was lost to addiction.
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So gentlement, don't tell me that increased addiction won't happen or that it can't happen. It most certainly can happen because it HAS happened in the past. All it takes is for someone to aggressively market the product once it is legitimized. Steve's point about rampant addiction putting a tremendous strain on an already overburdened medical system is well-taken.
