“As the opioid crisis takes lives on a historic scale, it’s time to kill a bad
idea,” said David French. “Just say no to legalizing hard drugs.” Since
the war on drugs took off in the 1980s, many thoughtful conservatives,
libertarians, and liberals have argued for legalization. Their rationale is
that the drug war’s costs—“in lives lost, lives squandered in prison, and
civil liberties curtailed”—outweigh any potential harm from the drugs
themselves. The opioid epidemic proves them wrong: The consequences
of hard-drug use are indeed “more horrific than prohibition.” The
scourge began when the federal government approved and pharmaceutical
companies aggressively marketed addictive prescription opioid
painkillers such as Percocet and OxyContin. It was, in essence, the
legalization of heroin in pill form. “Communities were suddenly awash
in narcotics,” and when prescriptions became more tightly restricted,
already-addicted people simply turned to cheaper street heroin. In 2015,
52,404 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses, more than the
number who died from car crashes or guns. People don’t choose to use
opioids—they become slaves to them. While we may never win the war
on drugs, “there is no choice but to continue the fight.”
