It's funny how differences of interpretation, either of which can be subjective in certain ways, are now suddenly labeled as "spreading misinformation". Debate if you like, but I recommend you don't use that idiotic phrase when your own arguments are also debatable.

The original opioid crisis with Oxycontin started in 1995, long before the modern problems with fentanyl. There could definitely be some connections between the two, but that's a stretched argument. What we're seeing today is a problem that involves different issues, different reasons for consumption and different causes.

The vast majority of the fentanyl overdose deaths happening now have nothing to do with people being addicted to prescribed medications after serious surgery. They're part of a separate demographic and social dynamic, so don't use the first thing and its necessities involving surgery and etc as an argument about today's opioid problems.

With that said, and this is my response to other comments here: yes, people have some aspect of free will. They're not blind puppets. With all the screaming headlines and WIDELY, freely available information about the dangers of fentanyl and how often it gets cut into many other recreational drugs, millions of Americans who consume drugs because of non-medical addiction or for recreational reasons have no shortage of means for knowing the risk they're taking.

Should they nonetheless receive help? of course. I'm not arguing against that at all, but I am arguing that squaring the blame on outsiders is politically dishonest, and generally not fully true. The cartels supply and they do so knowing that they want as many addicted people as possible. I make no apologies for them because they're disgusting in so many ways, but they're not just some simplistic case of "cartel poisons America", as if they were people secretly dumping cyanide into a water reservoir that everyone has to use. Instead, I repeat, it's "Americans are poisoning themselves for many pointless reasons of voluntarily chosen consumption of substances which aren't necessary for living, that could easily be avoided regardless of one's socioeconomic class.

Nothing about being poor and living in a ghetto obligates a person to make their life even worse by spending more of their scarce resources on recreational drugs that might be cut with fentanyl. This reductionist victim view of so many people reaches absurd levels with such an argument.

Finally, the whole argument about the cartels poisoning America is convenient for politicians, because on the one hand it lets them pursue a renewed justification for the monstrous drug war that has been failing for decades, and on the other hand, lets them maintain that push without directly blaming Americans for their own choices. It neatly fits the same tired narrative used for decades by "tough on drugs" politicians about stopping the nefarious activities of evil criminal foreigners, and all the attending militarization, civil liberties reductions and overseas interventions that come as part of this ugly package.

Do these criminal groups present a threat? sure, but is a renewed drug war going to be an effective answer to it while hundreds of thousands of Americans consume substances that nobody coerces them into consuming? No, fuck no. After 50 years of drug war idiocy that much should be obvious enough.