"Unfortunately, it is not only those who take heroin who are blinded by illusions, but almost the entire population, including—or especially—the experts. Every problem in contemporary society calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy. The ostensible purpose of the bureaucracy is to solve that problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct and no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself with no food for the future. In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction" (Theodore Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, pp. 9-10).

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