History says that China once had a major opium problem.
The government knew full well it needed to be stopped, and soon. Anyone caught using and/or selling was shot on the spot.
It wasn’t long before China didn’t have an opium problem anymore.
Draconian as it sounds, those may be our only choices.
The Philippines is taking that approach. Many people (here) are horrified.
I’ll tell you something which I really don’t think is a crazy idea (many people absolutely want to shoot me for saying this):
If the police were to seize heroin (as they often do) and then adulterate it with a slow-acting fatal poison and then put it out on the street for sale, in 4-6 months a large percentage of junkies would be dead. And other people would stop using (get treatment) because heroin would be no better than Russian roulette.
I believe we could eliminate the opioid crisis in about a year and then, for decades into the future, millions and millions of lives would be better.
But we won’t do that, because we are not an inhumane society.
Make it legal, make it cheap, make it easy to obtain!
Why waste bullets, when they will kill themselves willingly?
“Anyone caught using and/or selling was shot on the spot.”
Sure, and anyone else the government didn’t like could also be shot as long as the government made sure to plant some drugs on them.