From Laudinum to Lockdown: How We Lost Our Right to Choose
Not long ago, anyone could walk into a store and buy a bottle of laudanum—opium dissolved in alcohol—without a prescription. Bayer sold heroin through the Sears and Roebuck catalog. For a quarter dollar, they would ship it straight to your door – with syringes. It wasn’t perfect. Addiction was rampant. Labels were vague. However, people knew what they were purchasing.
Now, in the modern era, we’ve flipped the script so far that consenting adults—armed with information and desperate for relief—are forced to buy their medicine in the shadows. Illicit fentanyl isn’t deadly because it’s strong – it’s been utilized medically for decades safely– it’s deadly because it’s unpredictable. The government has made it illegal to access anything safer.
Our doctors? They know. Many are highly trained, deeply compassionate professionals who would rather ease suffering than appease bureaucrats. Unfortunately, DEA doesn’t care. Prescribe too much? Your license is gone. Too little? Your patient ends up buying mystery powder off Snapchat. Either way, someone suffers.This isn’t medicine; it’s institutionalized cruelty.
The idea behind regulation was noble—protect the public. However, like most government programs, a few generations later, it’s morphed into a cancerous, destructive beaurocratic tumor. What it’s become is a system where the suffering are silenced, the addicted are criminalized, and doctors are surveilled more than supported.
Meanwhile, opioid deaths increase. The war isn’t on drugs anymore. It’s on access. It’s on autonomy. It’s on you, me, and our parents. It’s on our neighbors, our firemen, and our physicians. It’s on our friends and their families.
We need a new model. One that acknowledges that adults are capable of making informed decisions.Safe supply saves lives. Doctors must be free to treat patients, instead of appeasing some government goon who never went to med school. Let’s stop pretending the current system is about safety. It’s about control. Control doesn’t heal. It only provides a paper trail .
