What’s the disease? Is it the body’s down-regulation of opioid receptors? If so, then you’re right. But if it also includes the impact of an active opioid addiction on one’s lifestyle, methadone clinics help treat that, which in turn makes it much easier to address the former.
I think for practical purposes, it’s most helpful to ascribe it to a recent and controllable factor.
Otherwise, you could say that the “no medical benefit” scheduling of cannabis also contributed. Restricting medical pain management options to (with a few exceptions) just opioids when there was an unexplored (medically) class of less addictive, less destructive, physiologically safe medicine, definitely didn’t curb the opioid issue.
I agree that stigmatization is a good thing, but if all tobacco products got taken off shelves overnight, people wouldn’t stop smoking, they’d just have to buy on an unregulated (unsafe) market. Not saying that current regulation is perfect, but at least it can be controlled, which allows the market to move in (hopefully) the right way.
> The thing about opioids is that you develop tolerance.
This isn’t really unique to opioids, and I picture the legalization/regulation being discussed in this thread as more along the lines of existing cannabis programs, though obviously stricter in whatever necessary dimensions.
> It's the addiction that kills
Not necessarily, now at least. Lifestyle, maybe, but plenty of people now are overdosing on fentanyl from just experimenting, not even necessarily with opioids. And yes it is dumb to experiment with unknown street narcotics, but I’d be surprised if you took your first sip of alcohol when you were 21, and it’s the same principle of doing something that feels forbidden (and will make you feel good). And, if it were during prohibition, that sip could have had methanol in it. Now it can’t because of legalization and regulation.
I think for practical purposes, it’s most helpful to ascribe it to a recent and controllable factor. Otherwise, you could say that the “no medical benefit” scheduling of cannabis also contributed. Restricting medical pain management options to (with a few exceptions) just opioids when there was an unexplored (medically) class of less addictive, less destructive, physiologically safe medicine, definitely didn’t curb the opioid issue.
I agree that stigmatization is a good thing, but if all tobacco products got taken off shelves overnight, people wouldn’t stop smoking, they’d just have to buy on an unregulated (unsafe) market. Not saying that current regulation is perfect, but at least it can be controlled, which allows the market to move in (hopefully) the right way.
> The thing about opioids is that you develop tolerance.
This isn’t really unique to opioids, and I picture the legalization/regulation being discussed in this thread as more along the lines of existing cannabis programs, though obviously stricter in whatever necessary dimensions.
> It's the addiction that kills
Not necessarily, now at least. Lifestyle, maybe, but plenty of people now are overdosing on fentanyl from just experimenting, not even necessarily with opioids. And yes it is dumb to experiment with unknown street narcotics, but I’d be surprised if you took your first sip of alcohol when you were 21, and it’s the same principle of doing something that feels forbidden (and will make you feel good). And, if it were during prohibition, that sip could have had methanol in it. Now it can’t because of legalization and regulation.