The comparison between potential legalization of established recreational drugs and the opioid addiction crisis don’t make sense to me. Many opioid addicts were

The comparison between potential legalization of established recreational drugs and the opioid addiction crisis don’t make sense to me. Many opioid addicts were prescribed those drugs for a specific medical purpose and not informed (because often the doctors did not know) of the addictive properties. It also falsely implies that the “legal” state of opioids today and in the past decades is comparable to what legalized recreational drugs would be like. The illegal market exists because the vast majority of people cannot legally obtain those drugs, not because they want to obtain it that way. If they could actually get it at the drug store (as the article claims), they likely would. To that point, countless addicts plead and mislead physicians everyday to try to legally obtain controlled substances they’re addicted to. So, IMO, that whole line of argument (a large chunk of the essay) is largely invalid. Personally, I think a big value to be had in some form of legalization is the redirection of funds spent on drug enforcement to treatment and recovery. The author seems to think that legalization would also make that worse, though it’s not clear why that has to be.