Hear, hear! Fentanyl has destroyed every city it touches in the same way, regardless of whether drugs are decriminalized or not. The cops don't have the budget to deal with it, all crime rises and huge swaths of the city become uninhabitable/unsafe for everyone. That's clearly the root of the problem.

Another solution might be for heavy federal intervention in finding and dismantling the fentanyl distribution network and throwing everything at them. Those guys need to be jailed for life or killed.

Another solution might be to allow opiate addicts to have access to safer versions (e.g., pharma grade and/or grow their own poppies).

My brother died of a heroin overdose many years ago -- it was illegal then (of course) and the country spent billions on "drug enforcement" but it didn't stop the black market from providing him a dangerous drug with no way of knowing purity.

Drug addiction is a health issue and by criminalizing it we don't make it go away, we just make it more expensive and more destructive to society.

What the fentanyl situation shows is that the real problem with the various decriminalization efforts in the US is that they don’t go far enough.

They also need to be providing legal, vetted, licensed channels that supply drugs to the users so people aren’t using drugs laced with fentanyl.

That’s the quickest, easiest and probably the least likely to succeed solution.

This is not how decriminalization of hard drugs has succeeded in any other country. Heroin abuse is illegal in Portugal, as is the unauthorized posession of fentanyl, MDMA, cocaine, crack, etc. They won't put you in prison, but they'll take you to jail. Addicts are compelled to enter treatment:

https://beportugal.com/portugal-drug-laws/

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ldjif4/the_portugal...

San Francisco is doing all they can to pursue the sort of plan you propose. It isn't working. Drug abuse and related crimes have only gotten worse. "I heard about Portugal on a podcast" drug policy has been a disaster.

Switzerland pioneered this approach, and it has been implemented in Germany, Netherlands, Canada and Denmark.[0]

What does Portugal have to do with it?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment

There is a difference between legalizing recreational heroin, as the parent comment and activists like Dr. Carl Hart suggest, and providing maintenance doses in a medical setting under supervised and monitored conditions. Switzerland does the latter.

Portgul is relevant because their program of decriminalization is frequently referenced in media and by US policymakers.

Hear, hear!

Society is just fine with people killing themselves with drugs as long as they are alcohol and tobacco.

The problem is too much money is made off the current situation and most the population has been brainwashed into thinking that making drugs illegal will protect us from them.