The problem is fentanyl is super cheap to make, so it's used as a filler in other opioid based drugs on the street right now. Problem is the OD threshold is so

The problem is fentanyl is super cheap to make, so it's used as a filler in other opioid based drugs on the street right now. Problem is the OD threshold is so low, you don't know if you're going to get super weak heroin or heroin that will kill you when taking a quarter of your normal dose. Because of this people start defaulting to buying fentanyl, not because it's better, but because they have no other option. These are the kind of people who aren't smart enough or well enough to get a prescription of what they need, so they have to turn to the streets. In the 1950s there was an antidepressant that worked on the kind of depression today we call treatment-resistant depression. You can still get it prescribed, but it's a pain in the ass, because it's opioid based. It's a long lasting 12 or 24 hour patch that normalizes the persons pain and emotional state. It doesn't get them high but it normalizes them. It's not ideal for physical pain, but for most forms of mental pain, which is why many turn to the street, it is ideal. These people should be getting prescribed with this, but they don't know about it and getting it is near impossible because of the stigma. Every new iteration of drug is worse than the last. People were not out in the street shooting up when the drug war started, but before the drug war heroin was easy for anyone to obtain. They had better tools then. As counter intuitive as it is, the drug war created this mess.