The number of deaths isn’t the whole story though. Smoking might take 20-30 years off your life. These drugs are killing people in their teens and 20s. The affects on their life are also not the same. We don’t see smokers trying to inject nicotine into rotting flesh. Nicotine is a choice that has little effect on anyone else besides second hand smoke. The drug crisis is destroying people/families/cities.

And 60,000 deaths per year in Canada from food*.

My uncle has smoked 2-3 packs a day from when he was 15 years old. He is 70 now. Somewhere between one and two million cigarettes in his lifetime. Many health issues, of course, but could you eat million burgers or drink a million cans of coke in a lifetime and end up with less health issues? (No, you couldn’t: that’s something like 8,000 calories a day every day for 80 years, you die of obesity by age 35. I’m not even completely sure you could drink that many cups of water, 3 packs a day is 90 cups of water or 5.5 gallons, perilously close to the ~6 gallon maximum rate of healthy kidneys working 24/7.)

My point is not that smoking is better for you than heroin or soft drinks or burgers or coffee or water. It’s that the dose makes the poison, and we tend to legislate based as much on “lethal dose” as on “total attributable deaths”.

*: Adding diabetes and heart disease together from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=131003...

In addition to what others have said, I'm skeptical of the 7,300 number. People getting a substance that kills them which they believed were opioids, may not be counted towards that number.

But if your argument is that opioids should also be sold by the government in a program that ensures we have a safe supply, then I agree with you.

What's the average life expectancy of an opioid user compared to a smoker?

They are not mutually exclusive, you know.