Well ya duh. The substance is addictive. There will be addicts whether it is legal or not. But addiction isn't a criminal issue. It's a medical one, so we should treat it as such and stop sending users to prison and stop creating a market for organized crime to make billions

And yet, it never got as bad as right now.

Congrats, prohibition has made the situation worse.

I don't know that that follows. Fentanyl's cost to the end user is like 100x cheaper than 19th century opium (or more? I can't find data but that's probably about right). Don't market economics explain the issue better than regulatory decisions?

I would say safe consumption (of a not random concentration) matters, particularly as reflected in the death toll.

Am I missing something? 10 million/330 milllion is 6x higher than 1/200.

Yeah i just realized my math wrong.

Addiction seems like much less of an issue if the substance is cheap and available in stores. I mean, we're "addicted" to oxygen.