"I find these two positions very hard to re-conciliate" Same as per vmception's comments. Also, what you need to realize is that opiate drugs are almost uniqu

"I find these two positions very hard to re-conciliate" Same as per vmception's comments. Also, what you need to realize is that opiate drugs are almost unique amongst drugs. There are staggering numbers of them in different classes - oral, injectable, short/long-acting etc. The tragedy is that they're all addictive and the degree of their addictiveness is directly proportional their effectiveness at reducing pain (see Burroughs's perceptive quote in my post). Thus, titrating the right dose and determining the period for which the drug should be given becomes a very difficult tightrope act, especially so if a long period is involved. Give too little and the patient suffers pain, give even a little too much and addiction is very likely the result. It's a nightmarish problem. Opiates are the Janus of drugs - one face shows a miracle drug - the other is unmitigated pain and tragedy - and often death. The issue here is that Purdue deliberately peddled oxycontin, a drug that can be taken by mouth, in ways that encouraged patients to easily slip into the 'too much' side. That this should never happen without supervision is a longstanding axiom of opiate management and has been known and well understood for over one hundred years. In essence, Purdue and the Shacklers deliberately chucked away years of best practice which then benefited them financially but to the patients' devastating expense. The matter of what drugs should be legalized etc. is somewhat different matter (which others have covered well so I won't address it except to say that they're not logically in conflict as they address different things).