Over at ACSH, Josh Bloom with (yet again) some common sense on opioids . . . .

Despite rhetoric from the oblivious media and opportunistic politicians, and distorted propaganda from shady groups like Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, what was really going on was perfectly obvious. I spent the next 3+ years banging my head against the periodic table on the wall, trying to bring home the message that we were fighting the wrong battle; injectables, not pills, were the primary cause of the soaring rate of lethal opioid overdoses and the more that the pills were restricted the more deaths would occur. Yet, it wasn’t until 2018 when a study confirmed what was already obvious five years earlier… The crackdown on prescribing opioid analgesics was not only associated with a spike in overdose deaths, but it also caused it.

Read the whole thing, or if you would like even more data and discussion on this topic, this collection of writings by Dr. Bloom is a good place to go.

And note this footnote:

Now the DEA wants to dictate how much of which drug can be manufactured. Does this sound like a good idea?

Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news:

In the span of a couple months, smokers have begun to think of cigarettes not as “cancer sticks” — but a safer choice for a fix than vapes, users say.