Everyone's either a convict making products or a guard, it's the perfect citizenry!

America's response to the opioid epidemic is a far cry from treatment and compassion. They're literally charging friends (addicts) of overdose victims with murder just for being associated by redefining "drug dealer" to be super broad and reclasifying ODs as poisonings.

Amazing read: He Tried to Save a Friend. They Charged Him With Murder.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law this month to reclassify fentanyl overdose deaths as “poisonings,” and Arkansas passed a “death by delivery” bill in April to charge some overdoses as murders in an effort to deter anyone from selling or even sharing fentanyl. Prosecutors in Alaska, California, Florida and at least a dozen other states were beginning to pursue new murder cases against any defendant who fit under the wide-ranging definition of a fentanyl dealer: a 17-year-old in Tennessee who, after graduation, shared fentanyl in the school parking lot with two of her friends, both of whom died; a husband in Indiana who bought fentanyl for his disabled wife, who overdosed while trying to numb her chronic pain from multiple sclerosis; a real estate agent in Florida who threw a party and called 911 when one of her guests overdosed; a high school senior in Missouri who gave one pill to a 16-year-old girl he met at church and warned her to “only do a quarter and then do the other quarter if you don’t feel it.”**

Yeah...as a white person from Appalachia that's definitely not the case in large swaths of the country where the actual plan is "fuck those poor hillbillies, let em die."

It's unfortunate that Oregon didn't setup the necessary infrastructure and processes that are used by countries who have successfully decriminalized drugs. Cops often walk by people doing hard drugs on the street rather than doing their jobs. There isn't anyone forcing addicts into treatment if there's continued recidivism, and perhaps most importantly - the biggest factors driving people on the streets to use drugs (no money, no stable housing, no mental health counseling, etc.) are not being addressed.

Many people would rather see measure 110 fail so they can go back to prohibition (which obviously doesn't work). Decriminalization and legalization are cheaper and more humane, but progress requires multiple parts of the government to actively help people.

Did Oregon do anything to address why so many people want to use fentanyl? You can fix people with drug abuse treatment when the drug abuse is a symptom of a larger problem—like homelessness—that's going untreated.

Before the Isreal Hamas flare up I saw reports saying the US was mulling the idea of ground presence in Haiti. The military looks more apt to try and find problems to insert themselves rather than not spend taxpayer money. God forbid they let their budget go down.

I am guessing in some cases it is a combo of psychological trauma plus external stressors like being broke af.

But drugs also cost money

There also needs to be a differentiation between different levels of pain. The case like you described seems like one where opioids are warranted. An opioid addiction is the lesser of two evils here. But if someone has chronic back pain because they sit all day and are overweight (not trying to shift blame here), opioids are an overkill and all painkillers can only be stopgap measures to tackle the root issues.

And so is the legislative response that put us here.

Heroin isn't a dangerous drug, just addictive. Legalisation would mean fewer deaths as quality could be regulated like other prescription drugs.