Are Drug Addicts Victims Or Criminals?

This article is about people who are addicted to illegal drugs, not people who become addicted to prescription drugs that were originaly prescribed by a licensed physician for a legitimate reason.
According to most defense attorneys, politicians, religious leaders, Hollywood celebrities and Democrats as well as many prosecutors and judges and as well as a large part of the American public who have been brainwashed by the "politically correct arbitrators", drug addicts are victims.
As far as I am concerned, that is a bunch of hogwash. Drug addicts are most definitely criminals. Not only are they criminals, they are as bad as, and should be punished in the same manner as, drug peddlers.
I don't feel sorry for drug users and addicts. A drug user, with very few exceptions (ie: Someone with an IQ of under sixty), knew the very first time he or she took illegal drugs that he or she was breaking the law. Therefore, the drug user, at that point, became a criminal. The drug user was not only breaking the law, he or she was also aiding and abetting the criminal that gave or sold the user the drugs. The user was providing, or would in the future provide, money or services to the peddler that would enable the peddler to stay in business and to break more laws. If there were no users, there would be no peddlers and if there were no peddlers there would be no drug lords. There would be no drug lords who could use their money to commit murder, nor cause murder to be commited. There would be no drug lords to bribe government officials, no drug lords to pay people to grow and cultivate plants to be turned into drugs. In other words if there were no drug users there would be no drug trafficking.
People have said to me, "I only smoke marijuana, and smoking marijuana should not be against the law because it is no worse than drinking acohol. Additionally, if it is a crime it is a victimless crime.". I tell them that they are wrong. In the first place drinking alcohol is legal for people over the age of twenty one (Whether or not drinking alcohol should be legal is a subject for another article.). In the second place, money used to buy marijuana goes to criminals and is in many instances used to commit more crimes. In the third place, some people resort to crime in order to support their habit. In the fourth place, many people while smoking marijauna, become idiots, and while being forced to talk to or deal with those people may not be considered a crime... it should be.
Many people state that the laws against using certain drugs are bad laws, therefore it is okay to break those laws. Well, I have news for them, if they use those drugs, they are breaking those laws (good or bad) and they are still criminals and they still deserve to be punished. Everyone has their own ideas as to which laws are good and which laws are bad. If everyone only adhered to the laws that they approved of then we would have anarchy.
If you don't like the current drug laws, work to have them changed. In the meantime every time you use illegal drugs you are helping someone either, a criminal or a terrorist, get into a position where they can commit more crimes, including possibly taking the lives of innocent people. This means that you could, indirectly, be killing innocent people in order to have your fun.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who would put people's lives in jeopardy in order to "enjoy" the use of illegal drugs, should be sent to prison for a long time. The idea that we should be helping and rehabilitating these 'poor', 'abused' drug addicts is baloney. People that are addicted to illegal drugs started out as criminals and are still criminals. They knew that they were breaking the law and, unless they were really stupid, they knew there was a chance that they could become addicted. They might have thought that they were too smart or too strong to become addicted, but they still knew that there was, no matter how small, a chance that it could happen.
Remember, if there were no drug users there would be no drug trafficking.