Heroin, Part 2

Prison population is the dotted line, Mental hospital population is the dashed line, The two added together is the solid line. Graph covers 1934 to 2000.

Dugan said some of the veterans rely on pain killers and opiates to deal with the physical and mental wounds of war, and that can lead to heroin, which is generally cheaper. - From a story by Kevin Freking on Military Times dot com

Heroin is cheaper than prescription pain killers!?!? I don't think we have a "war on drugs". What we have here is the strong ganging up on the weak. If your mental armor is not tough enough to withstand being run through whatever wringer you are unfortunate to get caught up in, the establishment's answer has been "screw you". Maybe there is a silver lining in our Middle East misadventures. We have so many mentally damaged people coming back that someone in the army has finally stepped up to the plate and is trying to do something about it. Maybe we will stop throwing the mentally ill in prison.