Especially so with that image of Broward County Sheriffs arresting someone “alleged” to be on Flakka. There’s not really any substantive or scientific interviews from doctors, EMTs, or the actual recreational users themselves. Just an anecdote about a murderer who may or may not have taken it beforehand and some pithy quotes. The fact is that recreational drugs get re-labeled all the time. For example a lot of “MDMA” is really just meth or research chemicals. The only people who really know what that kid took are the doctors. You’d have to test the substance to classify it.

And at the same time these drugs would likely not be in widespread circulation if the "classic" drugs were not illegal, which would increase availability and possibly keep prices low

Drug epidemics are not mere propaganda. Whole cities have been hit (according to articles like the one posted that I've found on the Internet) with hard stuff like crack-cocaine, bath salts and--probably?--flakka.

Current drug decriminalization trends concern a very different class of substances than those mentioned above, often objects of long-term research. It should be straightforward for a sane person to decouple one group of drugs from another.

Finally, I didn't know that such thing as an 'incarceration industry' actually exists. Here's a quick search result for others in the not-know: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/17/us-economy-embroiled-...