The deaths, money laundering. They're not symptoms of drug dealers, they're symptoms of the drug war. We should clean it up, but it's naive to think that we should just "fight the drug war harder".
This is a lot of power to give up.
The people whose jobs benefit from prohibition have a lot of say in this matter and they don’t look eager to unemploy themselves.
I think ending the war needs to come with viable solutions for them.
We can see that cannabis prohibition is slowly ending. I’m curious how will the prohibition industrial complex adjust.
Remember how the DEA keeps testifying about cannabis totally deserving a schedule 1 status? (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.entrepreneur.com/amphtml/31...)
They’re basically answering the question “do you want to stay employed?”
And the answer is “yes, absolutely, without a doubt.”
Similarly, we can’t go to Saudi Arabia/Canada/Russia/Us etc. and say “Hey, let’s stop extracting oil. It’s not good for the environment. Yes, it’s free money for you, but we want you to stop.”
Except that hopefully oil is getting less profitable. Drug prohibition will always be.
Not only were opioids massively overprescribed for otherwise legitimate purposes, once hooked, anyone could walk into one of several "Pain Clinics" located within a few miles of any population center and get a scrip for a pharma quality fix covered almost entirely by their insurance. Even without insurance, the scrip for a 3 month supply of Lortab I received after an emergency appendectomy was just $100 back in 2009 (thanks to manifacturer rebates!). That's a week's fix for any burgeoning pill junkie willing to do cold water extraction (to remove the acetaminophen) and all for a relative pittance.
Allowing mass quantities of high quality opioids onto the market is what caused this issue in the first place. Removing even more barriers to access isn't going to make things any better. In fact, it's guaranteed to make things worse based on the results so far.
Edit: I meant that as a compliment.