That’s such an ignorant take. The deaths started when pill prices went sky high as result of crackdown on prescription practices and people started switching to heroin because it was cheaper. That street heroin quickly became all laced with fent. Reopening pill mills would literally reduce deaths because pharma quality opioids are incredibly physically safe.

You can’t eradicate demand for drugs, no country has ever managed to, you can only either push the production and supply to the unregulated black market or produce your own drugs with state-mandated quality control.

This is just alcohol prohibition debate all over again, and we all know how well that worked.