“The war has ebbed and flowed over the past 54 years, but the results are clear. Drugs won. But instead of learning the requisite lessons, the Trump administration is ramping up anti-drug-war rhetoric to lunatic levels. The president recently issued an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.” He’s empowered the military to destroy Venezuelan boats that likely aren’t carrying that synthetic opioid or even headed to the United States.
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“Enforcing prohibition incentivizes those who market prohibited substances to develop more potent forms that are easier to smuggle in smaller sizes.” Now “other highly potent synthetic opioids are becoming more attractive for drug trafficking organizations to produce and sell.”
Drug-warriors ignore how their own policies helped create the latest crisis. The feds began cracking down on prescription opioid analgesics (OAs) to combat their overprescribing to people with pain issues. “Unfortunately, opioid dependence and addiction do not simply dissipate with the contraction in the availability of OA pills…Instead, individuals who lost access have turned to cheaper, more accessible and more potent black market opioid alternatives,” per a 2017 article in the International Journal of Drug Policy. The prime alternative was heroin. The feds cracked down on that, too, and then black markets shifted to fentanyl.
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Most Americans are aware of the foolhardy nature of alcohol Prohibition, which empowered organized crime, led to alcohol poisonings as illicit operations rarely have great quality control, corrupted police agencies and politicians, and caused prison overcrowding. We see similar results after a half-century of drug prohibition.”