That does not mean they are bad or even wrong-headed arguments.
The issue is a two-sided one. Users for medicinal purposes vs. recreational users.
The issue is a balancing act of how to protect the true medicinal users from being treated like criminal recreational users. Much like protecting law abiding legal gun owners while dealing with legal & illegal gun owners who commit crimes.
Some say that eliminating the possibility of a legal law abiding gun owner from becoming a criminal gun owner is to make gun ownership illegal.
The same argument is used with powerful drugs.
Eliminate potent narcotics from the marketplace, as the solution to combat the possibility of recreational usage of these narcotics.
This of course requires those who need them to lead a life that allows them the opportunity to remain a productive member of society with a pain level that is bearable, to be denied that opportunity. Thus they are treated just like the illegal recreational users and denied a product that they use legally and responsibly, because some do not.
Complete agreement with this.
However, I’d like to add that narcotics are a parallel problem to antibiotics. In both cases, used appropriately, they are godsends. Overused or misused, they turn into lethal nightmares.
From my own perspective, my doctor had a “Dr. Drugs” move into a suite next to his. A constant stream of middle class and upper middle class addicts flooded to his office for a month before he and his staff were arrested by the DEA.
He was not alone:
https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/crim_admin_actions/doctors_criminal_cases.pdf
Right now, drug treatment for narcotics addiction is overwhelmed by the number of new addicts seeking help. And while, unlike generations ago when addicts were poor derelicts, today many are well to do.
But even they cannot afford black market pharmaceuticals, so they move to heroin. While they think they will just smoke or snort it, within a couple of weeks they are injecting.
And this is where Fentanyl and its analogs come in, as well as W-18. Someone let slip that W-18 would be a superb poison to murder someone with, because there is no test for it. And both are so much cheaper than heroin, drug makers can’t resist.
The same with antibiotics. Their misuse is now causing some 2m annual infections in the US, with 23,000 deaths.
Pharmaceutical Opioid Analgesics overdose deaths in the US per year 18,893. Heroin overdoses 10,574. Both numbers are growing a lot.