This is generally my impression. A lot of addiction, too, which is why I favor making addiction as inexpensive and easy as possible.
At least localizes the problem.
I don't know how to save everyone. It's not in nature's plan at least.
I hope things work out for your sister.
It has been said many times we are losing the war on drugs.
If you legalise supply you control not only the supply but the purity and strength, that way you know what you are getting.
10mg of paracetamol from a pharmacy should be just that for example but in this case applied to I guess Heroin and cocaine among others.
Then you work on reducing the dependency, a t the same time as that try and deal with the mental health or other issues that have caused the addiction
Of course this also means that these substances can be tax, so lets tax them and put 100 percent of that in to providing free detox, mental health and other support.
As with other problems, it is fixable if we are prepared to be tough enough to have these hard discussions and make hard decisions as to how to solve the issues involved.
I oppose legalization and favor decriminalization.
Our goal is not to make drug use safe, only to make it less destructive.
In my view, the markets do a good job of regulating quality.
I also have very little faith in detox programs.
It's all up to the user, and most who quit do it on their own.
The best solutions are often the simplest.
Decriminalization avoids endorsing drug use, but also stops penalizing people for being addicted.
It lets nature sort of the issue.
A functional heroin addict would do fine under this order, and at least with morphine, this was once often the case.
If you say that the current policy on heroin "isn't working", and then change it, just be prepared for there being measurably a lot more heroin deaths, and then a lot of people saying that, actually, these deaths mean that the old policy was "working" after all. Drug discussion is always so utopian ("legalize weed! It has NO DOWNSIDES AT ALL"). If you can't harden your heart against a woman's sob story about how sugar legalization led to her fit and handsome son turning himself into a pig and then dying of it, and say that sugar prohibition's consequences were worse and that her son's real vice was a lack of self control, then you're just poisoning the well for other people who would take this position.
In my view, the War on Some Drugs (WoSD) has decreased some consumption.
Among poorer areas and the young however, it's easy to find drugs.
Would it be worse if the drugs were decriminalized or legalized? It's hard to tell, but likely more people would use them, but I'd say for a shorter length of time.
Much of the appeal of drugs is their bad boy status. Without that, most would move on to something else in their lives.
One exchange is:
>Fisher used retail alcohol prices to demonstrate that Prohibition was working by raising the price and decreasing the quantity produced. However, his price quotations also revealed that the Iron Law of Prohibition was at work. The price of beer increased by more than 700 percent, and that of brandies increased by 433 percent, but spirit prices in creased by only 270 percent, which led to an absolute in crease in the consumption of spirits over pre‐Prohibition levels.
The opposite happened in Britain a few centuries ago: (French) wine was heavily taxed, so the British just moved to beer.