I watched from the age of 15 the opiate epidemic take over my generation. It all started as a spiritual experience with other substances such as weed and mushrooms until around that time when the streets were flooded with oxy 80’s and parents started to sell them to us and everything changed. Since then, the few dozen of people I know who fell into the trap could no longer afforded those pills and started using heroin. Then the fetanel cuts started to happen and many of them started to die. Once opiates have you, everyday becomes a struggle to just try and feel ok. The people I hold closest to me all have been stuck in a vicious cycle of trying to exists without them. My x wife, my best friend, my self. We have all lost more then you can imagine to opiates. The minute they approved those pills for chronic pain when they are not actually for that, we were all doomed. Our generation was sold out for profit then either died, tossed into for profit prisons, or institutions. I understand going hard on drug dealers. I don’t understand going hard on drug users. No one would choose a life like that given another option. Even the top rehabs in the world success rates show just how hard it is to come back from being that lost. It feels like a system was implemented intentionally for us to fail. For us to be profited off us. For us to die young.