I’m not a public health expert but I don’t see how the status quo is preferable to letting anybody buy codeine at CVS. I’m seeing a lot of suffering in my neighborhood and a lot of money going towards it that could be better spent on other problems.
None of that matters to heroin users or users of more powerful prescription opioids because codeine will not give them the high they want. A better model would be something along the lines of marijuana dispensaries or state-run liquor stores, where legal sales can be made but with added levels of difficulty/obscurity. That kind of rigid legalization scheme probably wouldn't kill the black market, but it would absolutely save lives. Many people who are dead today would still be alive if they could have simply purchased a safe version of the drug they were going to do either way.
Widely used outside the US, but illegal to prescribe here. But you can own it here as long as you are not prescribing it. It's not as potent as an opioid, but it's a step up from the OTC stuff. I often buy it when traveling abroad (a bottle costs less than a dollar in Latin America) and my family has used it for years as millions of people abroad. There are concerns with safety, but according to plenty of foreign research, these risks are comparable to other, widely used medicine, and are based on outdated results.
This medicine is so cheap it wouldn't be profitable to do new trials in the US, thus we will likely not see this sold here anytime soon.
Anyway, this is not medical advice!
> Certain lower-dose codeine products (8 mg or less per pill, 20 mg or less per 30 mL of liquid medication) can be purchased directly from a pharmacist without a prescription to temporarily treat mild or moderate pain, or as a cough suppressant.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-us...