Such bullshit. Apparently they're even selling special fentanyl surgical gloves that claim to protect you from getting poisoned from touching fent. Just absolute bullshit.
Such bullshit. Apparently they're even selling special fentanyl surgical gloves that claim to protect you from getting poisoned from touching fent. Just absolute bullshit.
Yeah, originally doctors who didn't know any better accepted pharmaceutical company propaganda at face value and started over prescribing. Then when people became wise to this, the DEA and politicians took it as an opportunity to rapidly expand the war on drugs, suddenly cutting off people's prescriptions without a care for how this might impact anyone used to the high prescription rate and putting people into prison when they tried to get relief elsewhere. In fact, I'd say now there is a problem with under-prescribing. Many people who are actually in pain can no longer get pain relief. And those that can often have to give up things like marijuana to stay on the program.
The lack of pharmaceutical grade drugs then made it very easy for fentanyl to enter the drug supply without the existence of safe and cheap alternatives, causing the rapidly exploding overdose rate we see now. It's so pervasive that many opioid addicts take fake pills pressed with fentanyl knowingly because its literally the only thing around. That goes double for "Heroin" that is now mostly inert powders, veterinary tranquilizers, benzodiazepines, and fentanyl.
But even before the over-prescribing really became a problem there was always a background opioid epidemic. It turns out that when capitalism makes life suck people will seek out an alternative and others will provide that alternative so they can get ahead. It was true then that ending prohibition and providing people with safe, regulated drugs was the only solution that would saves lives and it's even truer now.
How is this the solution? How is continuing the dependence people have on these drugs the path forward? The communist position is the complete abolition of 'drugs' since it itself is a social category. You can look at China as the prime example, a nation that was addicted to opium had abolished it during the Mao period. The irony is that these types of drugs are obviously not 'safe' since it led to this current crisis in the first place!
There is an existing population that is addicted to opioids, and from what (admittedly little) research I've done into the topic, it seems like some of the most successful ways of getting people off of their addictions is providing a space where they can get easy access to free, safe drugs that also has optional treatment centers for those who want to get clean. If they feel forced, they just won't go at all.
Advocating for tighter control on illegal drugs will, in the US at least, just result in more money going to cops so they can brutalize minorities. I don't think banning recreational drug use would be remotely viable until the very highest stages of communism. For your China example, they have banned many "hard" drugs due to the obvious suffering they caused due to the will of the colonial powers, but they still allow other recreational drugs like alcohol and cigarettes.
China has the history of the opium wars looming over its drug policy. I'm not going to presume what's best for them because I have never lived there.
I do know that in the imperial core the criminalization and prohibition of drugs are used to oppress and enslave racial minorities. There is no justice for any of that while these racist drug laws remain in effect.
Then there's the harm reduction aspect. The prohibition of hard drugs has created an entirely unregulated drug black market where drug users have little to no recourse if their dealer poisons them. This black market remains as a consequence of prohibition in the imperial core so long as we exist under capitalism. That would remain the case even while we exist under socialism during a transition to a communist society. Drugs, especially opioids, are made wildly more dangerous under current conditions. Legalization with tough regulation is the only path forward.
That said, no one should be allowed to profit off of addictive drugs, they should be provided to people for free if they can demonstrate a history of prior use. This is vastly preferable to people getting desperate enough to consider injecting bathtub krokodil or using heavily stepped on mystery powder Heroin.