The pills are incredibly cheap to manufacture.
A few things would happen if we started handing out opiods for free:
* petty crime would decrease -- it's not the drug that causes the crime, it's trying to pay for the drug
* organized crime would decrease -- moving opiods is a lucrative operation, and our addicts are bankrolling very bad people by doing business with them
* users would get clean product -- opiods laced with fentanyl are a huge problem and responsible for the majority of hospitalizations and overdose deaths
* more users could hold stable employment and rehabilitate themselves -- i've known plenty of opiods addicts, but you'd never know they had a problem, because they were all rich tech workers that were not stealing to satisfy their addiction
* most injection users would be pill users if it wasn't so expensive -- giving them free pills would encourage a less risky route of administration and decrease sepsis cases
If we still have a homeless problem after that, communal housing outside of the city with free drugs might be enough to get them to relocate to where they're not a problem and in considerably less danger.
But then I remember that we live in a god-fearing christian nation, where drugs are bad and addicts should be shunned, so my plan probably won't work.