excellent point gypsy
we should research things because basically prevention is a lot better than cure.
you can't cure people who have suffered because of this - research needs to be done.

same for illegal drugs - they aren't that safe because they have not gone thru the clinical trials of legal drugs.... and look at the problems we have even with legal ones.

yes research both scientific and ethnographic need to be carried out.

finding out why helps everyone.

i have an ethnographic research paper on the behaviour patterns of drug dealers - this greatly helped the police etc target the issue to a deep level rather than shoving dealers from one turf to another.