Oxycodone is legal [albeit controlled]. There are plenty of pill doctors that will prescribe oxycodone to anyone that doesn't look like too big of a mess. A cousin of mine stole oxycodone from my grandmother when she couldn't afford the ever increasing costs of her spiraling out of control oxycodone habit. People have murdered and gone bankrupt acquiring oxycodone, and continue to do so. [https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/pharmacist-killed-after-r...]

If you're saying 'I meant it should be legal to buy over the counter for cheap and/or given away for free', then that might decrease the number of people being robbed for it - but doesn't seem to decrease the number of overdose deaths, area crime rate, or urban decay by as huge an amount (or maybe it just concentrates it?), at least based on the experiment in Vancouver, BC, Canada's lower east side. The Netherlands is also problematic, and not a solved problem. [https://www.areavibes.com/vancouver-bc/downtown+eastside/cri..., and overdose deaths have continued to skyrocket in Vancouver [http://www.vch.ca/Documents/CMHO-report.pdf] despite harm reduction, decriminalization, and other means.

Areas like San Francisco with de-facto decriminalization also have major problems with people, for lack of a better word, rotting of neglect on the street - something that I've also seen first hand in Vancouver. I also have friends who have seen this first hand in Seattle. Resident complaints around muggings, being assaulted unpredictably by unstable mentally ill people (on drugs or not is hard to say, but there is a high correlation with this and these areas in my personal experience) are hard to ignore.

This isn't a solved problem, and I'm not advocating for 'lock them up' policies - but pretending this will all be cool if everyone can walk down to the corner store and buy heroin if they think they're up for it isn't helping anyone either.

Oxycodone was the #1 recent example of patients and even doctors being lied to about the addictivene potential of the drug. For well over a decade, pharmaceutical marketers (from Purdue Pharma especially) straight up falsely claimed that habitual use of Oxycontin would not lead to opioid dependency.

Which is a very near mirror to Heroin, which was created as a less addictive/problematic alternative to Opium.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem to address my core point?

Legality can reduce some negative effects, but it isn’t a cure-all. There are also a lot of people that should just not use opiates or bad things will happen, and we can’t predict who those people will be reliably until it is too late.

So please don’t use opiates unless you really really need to, and be aware of the dangers.

It’s easy to predict who will have problems with opiates, very few go from 0 to 100 without skipping steps. Just license the users.

Commit any infraction, drive or work heavy machinery while under the influence, your license is suspended until you complete rehab. Do it too many times and it’s suspended permanently. Use while unlicensed, it’s jail time.

This way there is a progression. We don’t have to waste police resources on those who can handle it. The minority who can’t are directed into rehab to deal with their issues first, and only the minority of that group who fail to shake up get jail time.

Meanwhile crime is down because drugs are affordable. New addicts are down because kids aren’t getting laced drugs. Deaths and overdoses are down for same reason.

And it all costs society less, less police, less crime, less hospitalization and less death means less taxes.

People rob and murder people for all sorts of reasons. But drug addicts have to commit fewer crimes if their drugs are cheap and easy to get.

And legal drugs have known potencies, and aren’t mixed with other more addictive drugs.

Don’t compare decriminalization to legalization, they are entire different things. Decriminalization still suffers from higher addiction and death rates because selling the drugs is still illegal.