If you have money, opioids are easily available via dealers throughout the world and there is no epidemic of addicts. Yes there are individual cases, but most of these would be destroying their lives in some other available way if opiods weren't available, like heavy use of alcohol.
Most people don't know a dealer, and don't have the confidence to try to find one without worrying about the risk of contacting a narc or a tattletale or in some other ways destroying their lives because of the legal system.
Hurdles matter. It's like common sense gun control- red flag laws, waiting periods, assault weapon bans, etc. None of those things make it impossible to have a mass shooting - but they make it a little harder, and that will stop a certain percentage of people.
Dangerous drugs like opioids should be available, cheaply, by prescription only, and "addiction" should be a sufficient reason for the prescription. This makes the safe and secure drug source the correct choice for vulnerable addicts, still lets us drive the black market and drug cartels out of business, it prevents crazy impulse purchases, and the requirement to renew your prescription periodically gives you a chance for a responsible adult to non-judgmentally offer you resources for achieving sobriety. It's a win-win-win, guaranteed to lower death tolls and crime rates, but unlikely to increase the number of addicts.
Yes, we definitely are sacrificing some of everyone's bodily autonomy because we think it's less bad than the consequences of putting no limits on it.
Caffeine, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Cannabis, Cocaine, Meth, Heroin, Fentanyl, biological weapons
and on some parallel track:
BB gun, .22, Glock, AR-15, automatic rifle, RPG, cannon, tank, land mines, nuclear warhead
If there's even one thing on the above list that you'd not want to be automatically OK for every person in the world to own and operate (at least on a "until you hurt someone" basis), then you're putting an arbitrary limit which values "preventing likely harms to others" over absolute autonomy.
Even if you'd allow the warhead I don't think either of us can be said to be 'right' or 'wrong' -- just that it's most productive if we acknowledge which "paramount value" (perfect freedom vs. reduction in predictable harms to innocent others) we are prioritizing, and acknowledge that we have to make a significant sacrifice in the other one in order to do that.
With opioids not really, not easier than with rat poison.
With guns it's super easy, so they should be regulated.
I would not limit your freedom which allows you to hurt yourself, but I would limit your freedom which allows you to hurt me, because that would limit my freedom. Worry about yourself and your loved ones, leave my wellbeing to me.
Not to mention, do people use biological weapons recreationally? That's news to me
There is absolutely an epidemic of opioid addicts.
I know I'm happy certain drugs aren't easily available.
Teaching what addiction is like is much better at curbing it.
The easiest way to do that is to have someone hold their breath as long as possible until their body is screaming for air each time, for about half an hour.
Because that is what drug addiction is like, and taking the drug is like taking that breath of air, instant relief, until you run out of air again and you're in hell waiting for the next fix. Over and over. Never ending.
I'd say films like Trainspotting did a much better job at stopping heroin than any outright ban ever did.
People have some funny notions about the health consequences of opioid addiction.
In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and the Navy, he developed a heroin addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, initially beginning with morphine.[1]