I'm skeptical of that last one.

My dad was a heroin addict, and while he eventually got (mostly) clean, he wryly joked to me once "you know there aren't a ton of old heroin users for a reason"

Using street drugs kills - we can put people on opiates if done in a controlled way, for the rest of their lives, we instead have gone down the road of prohibition, closing off pathways for people to get maintenance dosing of opiates.