29 May 2023

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The Drug Epidemic That the Government Fuelled
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The Drug Epidemic That the Government Fuelled 

The 2010s are proving to be a banner decade for unintended consequences in America’s war on drugs. By now, readers are likely familiar with the policies that bolstered the markets for heroin and then illicit fentanyl: Law enforcement cracked down on doctors who prescribed large amount of painkillers, pharmacists were required to report opioid prescriptions to government databases, and regulators asked the pharmaceutical industry to make pills harder to manipulate. Unable to access snortable or injectable pills, users turned to the black market. As a result, prescription overdose deaths have declined in many states, but fentanyl- and heroin-related overdose deaths have skyrocketed.

The New York Times reports that two other substances are also having a moment. “Overshadowed by the Opioid Crisis: A Comeback by Cocaine,” reads a Timesheadline from Monday morning. “Meth, the Forgotten Killer, Is Back. And It’s Everywhere,” the Grey Lady declared in February.

Neither drug really went away—only Quaaludes have ever done that—but they are cheaper and more plentiful than they have been in years, thanks to supply reduction policies enacted by the United States and its allies. The Times tells us, for example, that a:

study by RAND found that cocaine consumption fell 50 percent between 2006 and 2010. But in the past few years, the cocaine supply from Colombia has climbed to a record high in part because of a peace settlement that includes payments to farmers who stop growing coca. To be in a position to qualify for those payments in the future, many farmers started growing it. As a result…cocaine prices have fallen, leading to an increase in cocaine use in the United States and some European countries.

 

Read the full article at Reason.

 

Image Credit: By Chmee2 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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