So here's something that kind of resonated with me.
I just had to bring a friend of mine, one of my best friends until recently, to a drug rehabilitation clinic on Thursday. I've been feeling kind of depressed so I've been reading a lot lately to "escape" and thus have been going through a lot of books from my favorite authors. One of the books I reread was Alloy of Law.
Earlier last month I had devoured it in my usual way, and while I had scanned the awesome newspaper articles in the book, I didn't really study them until today. This is partly because I just wanted the story, but mostly because the Kindle edition really doesn't allow me to study them. Fortunately, Inkthinker is awesome enough to allow me to get a view of it in its full glory on his site (if you read this, thanks for that).
What stood out to me was one advertisement in particular- the Soothing Parlor. While the clip itself seems innocent- describing itself more as if it was a spa of some sort rather than anything seedy- it does bear the question to my mind if some Soothers and Rioters are much like drug dealers in our world. Perhaps a better description would be the operators of Opium Dens that were infamous during the Industrial Revolution in Western Society.
Addictions can be subtle things, and many people think that they are physical thing in the body. However, in my experience with friends and their addictions, it seems to be more of a mental struggle. Physical addictions rarely last for greater than three days after the user stops consumption, but the desire of the mind for a surcease of pain and thought or a flood of pleasure lasts well after the body has any need for the substance. It's one of the reasons why I'm one of the few people my age who isn't comfortable about the idea of marijuana legalization.
I can imagine a situation where people people pay money to sit or lay around a couple of people rioting emotions of pleasure and happiness and/or soothing emotions of pain and worry.
Electrum Feruchemists would be in a great amount of danger of falling into an addictive state of mind by themselves. They could essentially create periods of being "high" by making themselves depressed quite a bit. Combining this with a Rioter, they could create a burst of overwhelming pleasure similar to a drug rush.
It would be very hard to regulate with laws, and that's even considering how ineffective the laws of the US are in dealing with our drug issues. As well, much like guns are also known as "Coinshots for the common man," opiates or other drugs may be considered as "Soother's elixir" or something similar.
I would find it interesting if Sanderson added an element of this into his future novels.