Answer for opioid crisis isn’t to legalize

drugs, the more addicts you get.

Think of the opioid crisis as the fruit of partial legalization. In the 1990s, for good reasons and bad, the medical profession, policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry made it much easier to obtain opioids in order to confront an alleged pain epidemic. Doctors prescribed more opioids, and government subsidies made them more affordable.

When you increase supply, lower costs and reduce stigma, you increase use.

A survey by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-third of the people who were prescribed opioids for more than two months became addicted.

The overdose crisis is largely driven by the fact that once addicted to legal opioids, people seek out illegal ones — heroin, for example — to fend off the agony of withdrawal once they can’t get, or afford, any more pills.

Experts rightly point out that a large share of opioid addiction stems not from prescribed use but from people selling the drugs secondhand on the black market, or from teenagers stealing them from their parents. That’s important, but it doesn’t help the argument for legalization. Because the point remains: When these drugs become more widely available, more people avail themselves of them. How would stacking heroin or OxyContin next to the Jim Beam lower the availability?

Liquor companies advertise — a lot. Would we let, say, Pfizer run ads for their brand of heroin?

I think it’s probably true that legalization would reduce crime, insofar as some violent illegal drug dealers would be driven out of the business. I’m less sure that legalization would curtail crimes committed by addicts in order to feed their habits.

The fundamental assumption behind legalization is that people are rational actors and can make their own decisions. As a general proposition, I believe that. But drug addiction makes people irrational. If you think more addicts are worth it in the name of freedom, fine. Just be prepared to accept that the costs of such freedom are felt very close to home.