Tom Wiler

As of today, more Americans have died from acute opioid overdoses than soldiers who perished in battle during all U.S. conflicts combined. While wars like Vietnam, Korea, and the two World Wars loom large in the national memory, the opioid epidemic has waged a quieter war at home, decimating communities in almost unfathomable numbers. And yet, where’s the uproar? The nightly news specials? The sweeping reforms? If that doesn’t sting, it should. It’s time we confront this catastrophe head-on, without sugarcoating it, without hiding behind platitudes, and definitely without asking for permission from bureaucrats who profit off our pain.

The Stark Numbers: A Deadlier Battlefield at Home

Let’s put it into perspective. Across all American conflicts—from the Revolutionary War to modern-day operations—the U.S. has lost about 1.3 million soldiers in battle. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic has claimed nearly 1.7 million lives through overdose deaths since the crisis began in earnest during the 1990s. Think about that. More people have succumbed to a preventable, systemic failure of public health, accountability, and liberty than died fighting wars for freedom. And here’s the kicker: the opioid epidemic’s death toll keeps rising.

Unlike soldiers, the casualties of this war don’t die under a flag-draped casket or receive a hero’s burial. They fade away in motel rooms, suburban bedrooms, and inner-city alleys—forgotten, stigmatized, and dismissed as “another junky.” But these are our friends, siblings, children, and parents. They’re our policemen, our veterans, and our doctors. They’re your neighbors; real people, not statistics.

How Did We Get Here? Follow the Money

The opioid epidemic didn’t emerge from a vacuum. It was engineered, plain and simple. Before 1914, it was possible to buy heroin at a corner store without a prescription. This ended with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, which criminalized the possession for sale of any narcotic, which at the time included morphine, heroin, and other derivatives of the poppy plant, and other narcotics. This forbade citizens from growing their opium, paving the way for Big Pharma years later. These companies (like Purdue Pharma), flooded the market with highly addictive drugs like OxyContin in the 1990s, backed by a marketing blitz that downplayed risks and overstated benefits. Doctors, incentivized by a broken healthcare system, overprescribed these pills, creating a tidal wave of dependency. And when the prescriptions dried up, people turned to heroin and fentanyl—cheaper, more potent, and deadlier. The government didn’t just fail to stop it; it actively enabled it. The FDA rubber-stamped opioids.

Politicians raked in campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies. And when the crisis spiraled out of control, they offered band-aid solutions, like cracking down on pain patients instead of addressing the underlying issues. Then, they persecuted the victims of their failure, spending over a trillion dollars since they first declared “the War on Drugs.”

The Libertarian Perspective: Fighting Tyranny, Not Drugs

Here’s where the Libertarian argument is compelling. This isn’t just a public health crisis—it’s a freedom issue. The opioid epidemic is a textbook case of what happens when governments and corporations conspire to strip individuals of their autonomy. Think about it: the same government that outlawed certain substances and built a prison-industrial complex around the War on Drugs simultaneously greenlit the mass distribution of opioids. They played both sides, punishing individuals for their struggles while profiting from the pharmaceutical machine.

People should be held accountable for their choices. But, they should also be free to consume whatever substances they choose. I am stating that in the “freest nation on Earth”, no one should go to prison merely for possessing “verboten” substances. Regardless of your personal views regarding drugs like heroin and cocaine, now more potent, fully synthetic substances have taken their place: drugs like carfentanil and methamphetamine. The former only exists in the recreational drug supply because of prohibition, not despite it. Cartels, whose sole motivation is money and power, use it because it is cheaper, and more potent, and as such, one successful shipment makes up for four or five that may be seized. As a direct result, illegally manufactured fentanyl and its analogs account for more than seven out of every ten unintentional overdoses.

Real Stories, Real Pain

Let’s briefly break from the numbers and focus on the human toll. Imagine a father who served his country honorably in Iraq, only to return home and die from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought to manage chronic pain. Picture a bright college student who injured her knee playing soccer, got hooked on painkillers, and spiraled into heroin addiction. These aren’t hypotheticals. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Heroin Research Report. A comprehensive Research Report on the prevalence of heroin consumption in the United States, conducted on 18 June 2018, these are the people who are most affected by opioids. They are real stories, echoed in every corner of America.

The opioid epidemic doesn’t discriminate. It hits rural towns and big cities, white-collar professionals and blue-collar workers, young and old. Yet, society often treats victims with disdain, as though addiction is a moral failing rather than a public health crisis manufactured by greed and neglect.

What Needs to Change?

If we’re serious about stopping this, we need more than empty gestures and political posturing. Here’s a no-nonsense roadmap:

1. Legalize Drug Use: Criminalizing drugs has only fueled mass incarceration and worsened the crisis. Redirect those resources toward education, treatment, and harm reduction.
2. Hold Big Pharma Accountable: Slap massive fines on companies like Purdue Pharma. Use that money to fund harm reduction programs and addiction treatment.
3. Promote Harm Reduction: Embrace proven strategies like safe injection sites, access to naloxone, and clean needle programs. These save lives, period.
4. End Government Overreach: Get the government out of the doctor-patient relationship. Pain patients shouldn’t suffer because bureaucrats decided to overcorrect after decades of negligence.
5. Empower Communities: Grassroots efforts often succeed where top-down policies fail. Let local communities lead the charge, tailored to their unique needs.

Why the Silence?

One has to ask: Why isn’t this crisis treated with the same urgency as terrorism, pandemics, or foreign wars? Perhaps because the casualties are easier to ignore. Perhaps because acknowledging the epidemic’s scale would mean admitting systemic failure on a national level. Silence is complicity – the opioid epidemic is a war we didn’t ask for, but one we must fight—because every life lost is a preventable tragedy.

Ending the Epidemic: A Call to Arms

The fight against opioids isn’t just about reforming broken systems—it’s about demanding accountability, protecting freedom, and saving lives. It’s about rejecting the narrative that “drugs are bad” and pushing for real change.

Start by educating yourself and others. Challenge the stigma surrounding addiction. Advocate for policies that treat addiction as a health issue, not a crime. And most importantly, hold those in power accountable—whether it’s Big Pharma, the FDA the DEA, or politicians who’ve let this crisis fester.

This is America’s quietest war, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. It’s time to raise our voices and reclaim the freedoms—and lives—that opioids have stolen.