The number of overdose deaths in the US and Canada have skyrocketed in recent years. Vancouver, BC is dealing with the fallout of having decriminalized all drugs at the beginning of the year. Now, areas of the city look like a dystopian hellscape (and I have always been for the legalization of drugs).

It seems like fentanyl is everywhere and in everything, meanwhile, the DEA has clamped down on oxy so that it is extremely difficult for people to get the real stuff, but dirty 30s are everywhere and relatively cheap. Everything the government has done to supposedly mitigate the "opiod crisis" has only served to make it worse. It seems like if oxy was cheap and easy to obtain, the proliferation of fentanyl wouldn't be as bad, and since it is far more potent (and dangerous), that would actually be a good thing. It almost seems like this was the intention all along. Don't provide services to the homeless or to the mentally ill (often the exact same people), but engage in a war against pharmaceutical pain meds thereby opening the door for a huge black market based on fentanyl that is resulting in 80,000 deaths per year (75% of the total number of overdose deaths) in the US alone.