>We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist.

Not really, this was a case of a private company deliberately pushing narcotics for profit without oversight or any associated increase in access to treatment options.

Now the "opioid epidemic" has been replaced with a "fentanyl epidemic" which is objectively a much more dangerous drug with absolutely no regulation and murderous cartels instead of doctors - and we're still throwing people in prison for the crime of being addicts rather than treating it as a medical issue.

I don't know the stats (or if it's even possible to accurately collect statistics due to prohibition) but I'm fairly certain this costs more lives than the short lived opioid epidemic.