Ummm, it did rise. Over 90,000 died from overdose in 2020, more than vehicle accidents or COVID.
Seems like you're cherry picking data which somewhat supports your hypothesis while ignoring the more recent data which does not.
For those that want to draw their own conclusions, here's the data:
https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/over...
Are you implying that had nothing to do with the socioeconomic situation unique to that year?
To attribute every suicide as an overdose is wrong on many levels.
you may argue a heroin addict has a right to heroin, but does a pangolin scale juicer have that right also and is the government now responsible for supplying them with safe pangolin scales?
what is the "correct" amount of heroin a person should be able to get from a pharmacy? how much should that cost? what if the "correct" amount for me is just under lethal dose and im essentially comatose between hits? is that society's responsibility to nurture my addiction. why is a single state-issued dose compassionate care, when many addicts need 4 or 5 doses per day to feel good? when i can longer afford the pharmaceutical dose, won't i just go back to street heroin?
if it's blindingly obvious that no state should seek to ensure that a "just-under-lethal-comatose-all-day" type of habit is supported and funded by the state, why would the state think it has some obligation to fund and support any habit at all. people get hooked on gambling and sky-diving too, but no reasonable people think it's the state's responsibility to maintain those.
beyond that, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis for the rest of us. unlike gambling or sky-diving, drugs of abuse are pretty cheap to manufacture. it might be cheaper to just give people drugs than to deal with the constant petty theft perpetrated by addicts. or it might not be, who knows?
The drug war can be won, but it will be compassion, empathy, and the invisible hand of the market that wins it. If there's high demand for something illegal, and there's a bunch of negative externalities to the illegal trade, it seems smarter to have some moderated legal trade to put the illegal trade out of business.
A relatively simple plan that isn't perfect but is arguably much better than what we have today would be something like this: if you are a drug addict, you can get a drug test to prove you are hooked, and then get on a free but gently tapered government supply with optional therapy. "Club" drugs that people will generally do sporadically (cocaine, MDMA, shrooms) are sold over the counter with either a positive drug test or a street sample, limited with a personal use quota. The government drugs are all chemically tagged or variants not available on the street, so it will be possible to detect and respond to diversion.
As a drug dealer, this would be a nightmare, since all your best customers will disappear, and you can't even smurf the government supply because your smurfs keep getting caught clean (diverting) and get their supply cut off.
They do. Can you point me to the page you read about heroin maintenance that didn't include anything about the consequences?
> you may argue a heroin addict has a right to heroin
Nobody has a right to heroin. What people have is a right to life; a right to health; a right to not be harmed by treatment. Current treatment for heroin addiction, especially if it's based on abstinence alone, violates each of these. Heroin substitutes are best, but they're not suitable for everyone and some people are not ready to move onto a substitute. In these cases we should provide legal heroin to maintain the habit. This would preserve this person's rights. Importantly, it would preserve the rights of the people around this person. This person no longer has to steal or sell sex in order to fund their habit.
> but does a pangolin scale juicer
I genuinely have no idea what point you're trying to make with "pangolin scale juice".
> what is the "correct" amount of heroin
Enough to maintain their current use pattern, with the aim to gradually reduce and then switch to a substitute. But with the recognition that just giving people heroin for the rest of their life is better for them and for the rest of society than forcing them to get illicit opioids.
> how much should that cost?
Diamorphine is incredibly cheap. Providing diamorphine in a safe setting is costly - you need a trained, qualified, registered, healthcare professional to monitor patients who are self injecting. You need a building that's insured and cleaned, run by a service that's subject to some form of oversight. But, again, all of this is far cheaper than just leaving addicts to source illicit opioids.
> what if the "correct" amount for me is just under lethal dose and im essentially comatose between hits?
You should probably stop talking about addiction if you're this ignorant.
> is that society's responsibility to nurture my addiction.
You keep saying things like this, and it highlights how you've fundamentally misunderstood the point. We're not "nurturing addiction", we are treating addiction with a safe, effective, evidence-based approach. Why do we give insulin to T1 diabetics? Are we nurturing their diabetes? No, it's fucking stupid to say so. We're treating a chronic health condition.
> why is a single state-issued dose compassionate care, when many addicts need 4 or 5 doses per day to feel good?
Addicts don't take heroin to feel good. They take heroin to avoid feeling bad.
> when i can longer afford the pharmaceutical dose, won't i just go back to street heroin?
Yes, which is one of the reasons
> people get hooked on gambling and sky-diving too, but no reasonable people think it's the state's responsibility to maintain those.
We should be providing addiction services to people who are addicted to gambling. So far the evidence for problem gambling is clear: more gambling is harmful, not helpful. This is the reason we don't recommend subsidising gambling for problem gamblers.