[chefandy]

You're picking at a razor thin slice of the premise while entirely ignoring the context. It doesn't matter which drug does what. In the time period that they were properly funding treatment as a replacement for the immense expenditure on drug law enforcement for users— so not within the post decade— drug use and all of the social ills that come with it were reduced, in some cases dramatically, compared to the rest of Europe, and the rest of Europe was doing great compared to the US. The US criminalization of drug use is a fantastically expensive moral crusade that imparts misery upon people with addiction for absolutely no benefit. Portugal maintained stiff penalties for people in the black market drug business, as they should have, but simply treated the users instead of jailing them. If you have some kind of actual data showing that fentanyl, carfentanil, et al users are affected by policy differently than all other criminals or even motivated by punishment dramatically more than all other addicts, then bring it.