And that is wrong. The west is backwards in this regard. In the UK, Australia, NZ, you can get paid with tax payers money for choosing to not work... So someone works hard to fund your life. Someone works hard to pay your bills for your choice to smoke. Someone works hard to pay your bills for your choice to do drugs and get addicted.

It’s not always that simple. The opioid epidemic is largely because people use legal pain killers as a gateway drug.

Think about it from an investment perspective. The addict has typically had some semblance of public education. That cost tax payers money. Let’s call it $40k over 18 years (12 grades). That investment needs to be recouped by society for it to pay off.

Now this person has gotten addicted to drugs. We could do nothing and they might commit crimes to fund their habit and hurt innocent people but then we have to imprison them at great cost to society and we lose more potential tax revenue and productivity from the potential loss of life of victims. We could leave the addicts alone and hope they die peacefully from their addiction, knowing we lose the investment (not to mention it calls into question our morality for letting someone die when we have the resources to save them). In reality though addicts get more desperate as they get more addicted and are more likely to turn to crime. We could be proactive and imprison them at great cost to society for being addicts. During which time they gain an education of criminal behavior that helps them fall deeper into criminal activity to support their addiction.

Or we could realize that we just need to treat addicts as medical patients who can be rehabilitated if given proper treatment. This costs society money up front but helps rehabilitate addicts so they can become productive citizens again. This is not revolutionary.

> It’s not always that simple. The opioid epidemic is largely because people use legal pain killers as a gateway drug.

This problem pretty much only exists in America. Because you can literally write fake prescriptions and get them filled, or buy them off gumtree.

The problem exists elsewhere. America tracks it better than most countries.

The drug war is Jim Crow 2.0 and has failed to do anything than further degrade the economic perspective of minority populations while simultaneously costing tax payers a fortune. It’s a shameful and disgusting set of policy that needs to be terminated.

> The problem exists elsewhere. America tracks it better than most countries.

America is terrible at tracking anything. It doesn't even have a central marriage registry. It is literally the only country in the world where you cannot request for a certificate of impediment for marriage.

Doctor's write prescriptions for non-existent symptoms and get paid under the table by patients to do so. And filling in prescriptions doesn't require additional checks from a pharmacy.

America, like always, fights the wrong battles. Instead of fixing the system, it tries to patch it at either end. No one tries to resolve problems in America. It's no different from the abysmal education system & health care system.