How does that stop OD?
Because I've never seen stats to back that up, other than that illegal synthetic opioids are the leading cause of OD.
Those aren't necessarily the same thing, and I would like to know more about the actual reason behind OD's.
The number of overdose deaths are spiking, driven by fentanyl. That is 100% fact based.
Now you have to make a qualitative judgement: I think most ODs are accidental when this is studied. Did a whole shitload of drug users just become unusually suicidal? I would say it’s safer to assume “no” unless you see evidence to the contrary.
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/sapc/MDU/SpecialReport/Fent...
Look at figure 2 here: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
If you have good opioids in hand then there's no need to buy opioids of uncertain strength from dubious sources. Thus your dosage is more controllable.
If your supply is reliable then there is no seesaw of deprivation when you're out and overindulgence when you're flush.
For further data, apply the same logic that keeps people from oding on alchohol.
Th way I see it, alcohol issues wouldn't be reduced if you made it illegal and less people drank it, but now people are drinking unregulated moonshine that makes them blind or kills them because it contains methanol and isopropanol.