Of course, when your product is declared illegal, it's not even a free market anymore, so all conservatives should be objecting to that.

We tried this way back when, Prohibition . How fun was that?

And this leads us to the questions of advertising, media, gullibility and profits.

...as a person who's had tangential experiences with some folks in the drug trade is why someone selling cocaine would put any amount of fentanyl in it. Cocaine is a stimulant, fentanyl is a narcotic. There are people who'd willingly want to affect of a "speedball", but most consumers of coke just want was coke normally does. Most cutting of cocaine happens as the last step of street sale. As cheap as fentanyl is said to be, it can't be cheaper than mannitol.

My limited knowledge is more than 20 years old, so maybe something's changed that I don't know about.

Is why are we still using the tired trope and image of a “druggie” when the consumers are across the spectrum (think single moms with three kids to Special Operation Forces service members to construction workers to tech bros).

That doesn’t make sense to me in two ways.
Killing customers isn’t good for resales
Users just want their high. Their normal high.

That’s just me.

God forbid we provide the latter.