> even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it
I’m going to stop you right there. Basically the whole opioid epidemic is because herion is illegal. We’d have way fewer deaths if we’d provided safe and legal access to it. And also American companies would have the profits instead of terrorists and organized criminals.
You have it backwards. The opioid epidemic promotes heroin usage, because some people find it difficult to get access to prescription opioids, especially after the addiction ruins their access to normal jobs.
The path is prescription opioids > addiction > any source of opioid. At least amongst the addicts I've met.
A streetwalker once told me that her dream job was selling cosmetics in a mall. She fantasized about that life. Another was a former RN, until a car accident got her addicted to opioids; she owned a mattress and a change of clothes and a crack pipe.
Did the decades of Oxy which caused this epidemic not count as safe and legal access? I suspect we've tried allowing opiates more than once or twice in the millenia we've been here.
I am as pro-drug-legalisation as they come, but the US opioid epidemic can't be blamed solely on heroin being illegal.
Heroin is illegal in Europe as much as in the US, yet we do not have a horde of zombies high on fentanyl on our city street corners. What's the difference?
I honestly do not have the answer, but there is a brilliant TV show called "The Wire" that shows how the drug problem cannot be traced to a single cause, but it is systemic and you can place the blame at any echelon of society — which means it starts at the top. It's the result of corruption, collusion, lobbying, overpolicing the addicts yet underpolicing the doctors and private insurance companies that give opioid prescriptions out like candy. It's the politicians pocketing indirectly the result of this trade. It's the narcos being propped up by the US three-letter agencies because they play a certain role in whatever is today's bad dictator to be toppled. It's the massive inequality for some minorities that have often no other choice than start dealing, or start using, to deal with the stresses of increasingly expensive food and rent.
Good luck untangling this knot. You'd unravel the entire structure of modern USA.
I’m going to stop you right there. Basically the whole opioid epidemic is because herion is illegal. We’d have way fewer deaths if we’d provided safe and legal access to it. And also American companies would have the profits instead of terrorists and organized criminals.