Poverty + addiction = ?

Eastside Neighborhood Is Dark Side of Vancouver’s Olympic Glow - NYTimes.com: "The research, published in August in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that addicts given heroin in a clinical setting committed fewer crimes and cost the government less in social services. Some weaned their habit with substitution drugs like methadone. Others learned to maintain their addiction."

Everyone has a pet theory about what to do with addicts who are poor. The ones based on actual research are unsatisfying to anyone who just wants all addicts to suck it up and quit using. I think it's probably because anything short of the ideal of permanent total abstinence seems like the same thing as giving up, as incentivizing drug use. Naturally, I think that's silly: drug users need no additional incentive to use drugs.