You could argue that the Taliban are the government that cares the most about addicts, because they are actually making addicts change the way a parent corrects a child
But addicts are grown ups with free will
Any * successful * treatment requires the patient to want treatment.
In addition, the triggers for it all need to be addressed.
Those can be:
Simple pain, trauma
More complex financial issues, housing, etc...
PTSD of various kinds, war, abuse and the like.
Without a plan to address triggers and desire to be done with it all, treatment success is extremely unlikely.
We are fallen creatures and simply accepting our fallen nature might be more productive
The primary is to want to be done.
It all starts there.
How ending it goes really depends on the person. Take it one struggle at a time. Wash, rinse repeat.
Having finished, one tends to look around and ask, "what now?"
And that is what I meant. Have some options for people that are not doorways back.
The part that hasn't changed is "screw them." Nobody really cares about these people. They're viewed as an inconvenience and the debate is over the least costly way to either warehouse them or shove them aside somewhere. Most people view addiction as a moral failing and think addicts deserve whatever they get.
I've never been in favor of drug criminalization except possibly in the case of the most addictive and deadly hard drugs (crystal meth, fentanyl, concentrated opiates), but I always hoped that legalization would come with a redirection of funding from prisons and police into treatment. The latter part just isn't happening, or isn't happening with any effectiveness. My take is that nobody gives a damn and decriminalization is more about saving money than freedom or better treatment approaches.