Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on the Bird app Monday that he believes the potent opioid fentanyl should be legalized.
Musk explained that he overtook visible drug use while commuting to Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, and that current approaches have failed, so providing a supply of controlled drugs is an attempt. claimed to be worth it.
Tech moguls compared the prevalence of fentanyl to the rise in alcohol-related deaths following the temperance movement of the 1920s.
“The ban on alcohol in the US has caused the biggest increase in organized crime in our history. How many times do we have to learn this lesson!?” Musk tweeted.
Fentanyl, an opioid 50 times more potent than heroin, has been linked to more than 2,000 deaths in San Francisco since 2020.
I think it should be legalized. With real QA and regulations, the chances of overdose and bad batches are greatly reduced.
Also, when substances become illegal, crime becomes rampant. Alcohol is just a “drug”. It’s a legacy drug from the days before alcohol.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2023
Proponents of legalizing and regulating the country’s drug supply argue that reducing the antisocial behavior often associated with drug use could reduce overdose deaths and crime. It argues that it normalizes the use of dangerous drugs and not curbs the criminal organizations that already sell them.
Leaders at San Francisco City Hall support the policy, but efforts to create facilities for supervised drug use in the city are stymied by legal issues.
Withdrawal drugs such as buprenorphine and methadone are already legal in the United States when prescribed for opioid addiction, and proponents on both sides of the drug policy debate support drug therapy.
David Shawstedt can be reached by [email protected]
