Everyone is not fine with heroin being illegal. Heroin being illegal is wildly irresponsible and immoral because while heroin is a dangerous drug, far more danger is created by an unclean and unpredictable supply and by pushing addicts into crime to finance it.
The big difference is that speeding puts others lives at risk. Someones heroin addiction for the most part will themselves at risk (except where keeping it illegal pushes people into crime to finance their addiction, which is another reason to provide legal access)
Even in countries where heroin possession and use has been decriminalized (for the compassionate reasons you mention), heroin is still illegal in that there are still prohibitions against its production and sale. It would be a fringe position indeed to say that all laws relating to hard drugs be taken off the books.
It would be fringe position, yes, but decriminalisation is not enough - it does not fix the issues with heroin use, for example, which are tied to a mix of cost and unreliable supply.
Hence it's important to get people to stop seeing opposition to legalisation of these drugs as "obvious", because opposing legalisation of these drugs is extremely irrational.
Current laws on this are immoral and deeply harmful. The vast majority of drugs should be fully legalised and regulated, not decriminalised. The only reasonable exceptions are possibly things like fentanyl and "synthetic cannabis" variants that few people use because they want just those drugs but because of poor availability of safer drugs.
Any evidence-based drugs policy would involve full legalisation of most drugs - there's simply nothing that suggests the current laws achieve their claimed intent, and plenty that demonstrate they are causing massive harm both to addicts and to victims of related crime.
> there's simply nothing that suggests the current laws achieve their claimed intent
Decriminalizing heroin possession and use, while keeping production and sale illegal, has already resulted in absolutely massive reduction of heroin use in several places. Sometimes to the point that there’s only a few elderly addicts hanging on but virtually no younger users are taking up the drug. I’d say that the policies achieved their claimed intent. What more do you want?
The big difference is that speeding puts others lives at risk. Someones heroin addiction for the most part will themselves at risk (except where keeping it illegal pushes people into crime to finance their addiction, which is another reason to provide legal access)