Opiods are different, IMO, because they are generally issued by doctors, and they can kill you pretty quickly. Alcohol and tobacco, while dangerous, do give quite a bit of time to change and be saved.
Obviously the govt should do anti-smoking campaigns, but opiods are different.
The typical tobacco death is someone in their 70s, whereas the typical alcohol death is someone in their 30s. (The majority of alcohol-related deaths are from suicide, car crashes, and slip-and-fall type injuries.) I doubt the types of deaths we're seeing from heroin are that much different than with alcohol.
Unlike alcohol and tobacco, a lot of opioid use is illegal, and a lot is prescribed by doctors - this makes for a very different playing field.
If opioids were legally and openly sold, it would likely have a big impact (I'm not saying they should be, BTW).
Regulation would mean quality control, so you'd be much more likely to get what you thought you were buying.
Another example, if choice was available, almost no recreational opioid user would choose fentantyl or some of the random opioid RCs that pop up, instead opting for safer versions.
About 11,000 people die in drink driving accidents in the US. Compare that to only cirrhosis, which kills over 30,000 people per year. Excessive alcohol causes about 1 in 10 deaths in the 18-64 age group in the US.
The question is what lessons do we learn from this? Tobacco and alcohol use are treated as public health issues. That should continue and be extended. This has been shown to work where outright criminalizatuon has been shown to fail.
The same lesson should be applied to opioids. I don’t believe they should be legalised. As in Portugal, non medical sales should still be illegal and treated as just as serious a crime as now, but use should not. Possession of small amounts should be no more criminal that having a few too many cigarettes in your airline baggage, it should be an administrative offence. Doctors should be able to treat, help and support opioid addicts just as much as they help alcoholics without risking being treated as accessories to a crime. Providing clean needles should not be treated as a crime aiding and abetting drug use. Hundreds of thousands of users with no history of violent crime and convicted solely on the grounds of possession should be at home with their families and no more persecuted that smokers or drinkers. Crack down on the dealers and support the users to get them back into society, turn users into allies against the trade by treating them as victims. It’s been shown to work.
I also think that we need more research into pain-fighting interventions to develop non-opioid painkillers.
We don't need to demonise opioids, we need to carefully control their use.
doesn't the body get used to opiods so x months or weeks later they no longer work as before? If so, seems like a losing game
With kratom, as long as you don't escalate your dose, tolerance never seems to develop.
I've been on a weak opioid (prescription!) for over 2 years now. The 'good sensations' left after only a couple of weeks of taking it, but it's still as effective on pain now as it was at the start.