> Faced with an excessively harsh criminal justice system and a legal industry that carelessly causes drug epidemics, I have come down somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

But the middle is where we are now. Opioids are highly regulated. It is illegal to possess them without a doctor's prescription. The regulatory regime is so strict that some doctors are afraid to prescribe them at all [1]. And yet, here we are.

The free-market answer is to allow civil suits against drug manufacturers for damages caused by overdoses. That's not a perfect solution either, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we have now. At least it doesn't produce perverse incentives the way all other proposed solutions do.

[1] http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20189399,0...