In response to: What the Opioid Crisis Can Teach Us about the War on Drugs
My Liberty Forum essay contended that America’s experiment with easily available opioid painkillers was an indication of what might happen if we legalized drugs completely: a shocking and intolerable increase in overdose deaths. I suggested that, instead, we might push to A) focus the punitive aspects of the War on Drugs on dealers rather than users, as we already do to a large extent; and B) work to expand access to treatment, especially medications that satisfy users’ cravings.
More Responses
Psychoactive drugs collectively nonetheless belong to a small class of products that merit a carve-out from libertarian principles.
Prohibition makes opioids more dangerous because it forces the market underground, which inhibits normal quality control.
The problems, then, go much deeper than the use and abuse of this particular class of drug.
Confronting a litany of harms from the use of a dangerous substance, he finds the fault not in ourselves, nor the substance, but rather in our laws.
