Think about getting a root canal or having teeth pulled and having the dentist give you a prescription for three pain pills. Think about having a broken bone and being told to take ibuprofen. Think about a politician instead of your doctor deciding whether, and how many pain pills you can have.

We cannot jail ourselves out of a medical problem. Most opioid deaths involve the use of at least one other drug (or alcohol.)

By fixating on fearing opioids, we are missing the more culpable factors that lead some people to keep using drugs despite negative consequences. Opioid use on its own is not dangerous, and it’s time we stop demonizing it. Instead, we must implement a national overdose education strategy targeting the immediate factors of opioid-related overdose: drug mixing and tolerance changes.

That's why the Supreme Court ruled in Burrage v. U.S. in 2014 that in cases where the Feds charge someone under the enhanced penalty provision for distribution of drugs resulting in death of the user (where “death or serious bodily injury results from the use of [the distributed] substance”), the government must prove that but for the drug distributed the user would have lived.

We hold that, at least where use of the drug distributed by the defendant is not an independently sufficient cause of the victim’s death or serious bodily injury, a defendant cannot be liable under the penalty enhancement provision of 21 U. S. C. §841(b)(1)(C) unless such use is a but-for cause of the death or injury.

We don't need more crimes for which the death penalty may be sought. We don't need greater penalties or more mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders. We don't need politicians or the Global Holy Warriors of the D.E.A. deciding what pills and how many our doctors can prescribe.