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Agreed that 'what are the real harms beyond overdoses' is the important question here.
And I think it has to be a lot more nuanced than 'making it legal means more'. I think in a sense that's true, sure, but it overlooks usage dynamics.
Like, if you legalized fentanyl and nothing else, sure more people will use fentanyl. But fentanyl is 'popular' right now because it is more addictive and cheaper to produce than other drugs, drug dealers prefer to push it on clients and mix small amounts of it into other drugs to increase their potency and addictiveness, it's not popular primarily because people are freely choosing it over other alternatives on a free market.
If you legalize fentanyl and oxycodone and hydrocodone and opium and heroin and extasy and lsd and shrooms, and you get corporations to make them so they're pure and clearly labelled and have warning labels about their addictiveness and risks, and they're all mas produced commodities with reasonably comparable prices, do you still have the same level of fentanyl epidemic?
I do believe you get 'more' drug use, but I'd expect it to fall more to less harmful drugs, and less destructive patterns of use. I'd expect more people to be getting clear guidance and feedback from friends and family to slow the rate at which they increase their dosage, keeping them less messed up for longer. I'd expect commercial drugs to be less expensive in ways that limit how much people have to sell everything they own and turn to crime ot afford their fix. I'd expect it to be harder to fund an addiction with criminal activities when you're buying from a respectable businesss with security cameras and transaction records the police can subpoena and corporate liability to watch out for, instead of from another criminal off the books.
Etc.
Basically, I think the generic 'amount' of drugs used doesn't correlate that much with the amount of harm caused, compared to the effect of changing the social and legal regime in which that use happens.
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