107,000 Overdose Deaths Are the Latest Casualties of the War on Drugs

An increasing number of overdoses were the result of fentanyl and methamphetamine, each of which have proliferated amid government crackdowns.

Amid the news that the U.S. had reached 1 million deaths from COVID-19, this week saw another grim milestone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the U.S. recorded more than 107,000 deaths from drug overdoses last year, a record high. This is a 15 percent increase from 2020, which held the previous record of around 93,000 deaths. While there has been plenty of talk about how many COVID deaths were preventable, it's also worth considering how many overdose deaths were the result of needlessly draconian government policies.

According to The New York Times, an increasing share of the number of total overdose deaths came from users of synthetic opioids and methamphetamine. The number of deaths from synthetic opioids increased from 58,000 to 71,000; most of these involved fentanyl, which is considerably stronger than morphine or heroin, and its analogs, which are even more potent. It is often mixed with heroin or stamped into counterfeit prescription drugs. Deaths associated with meth also rose from 25,000 to 33,000.

Each increase follows a longer-term trend: A decade ago, meth-related deaths numbered fewer than 2,000, but by 2017, the number had risen to 10,000. Similarly, deaths from fentanyl numbered around 1,600 in 2011 but increased more than tenfold by 2016.

Obviously, there are a number of reasons why people may abuse drugs. But the role of drug prohibition in exacerbating the crisis cannot be overstated.

During the same years that fentanyl use increased, the prescription rates of opioids like OxyContin plummeted. This was no accident: In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions bragged about how successful the government's efforts had been at lowering the rates at which doctors prescribed opioids for pain. And yet, the overdose rate continued to climb, as both addicts and chronic pain patients alike were forced to seek out black-market alternatives.

A few years earlier, in an attempt to combat the spread of meth, Congress restricted the availability of the decongestant Sudafed, while the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on homegrown meth labs that used it as an ingredient. As a result, cheap, low-quality meth from Mexico with suspect ingredients filled the gap in supply.

Each case provides a perfect example of what Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, refers to as "like playing a game of 'Whack-a-Mole,'" in which the government cracks down on a drug, only for its users to seek alternatives, typically in a more dangerous form. Prescription opioids, in particular, certainly do have the potential for abuse, though not to the extent often portrayed in popular media. But for those who genuinely need pain relief and who are suddenly unable to get it, the alternatives are much worse.

Comments

[R Mac]

How about advocating for drug legalization from a libertarian perspective?

[JohannesDinkle]

Legal drugs would be checked for purity and strength. Overdoses might then be seen as suicide rather than as an accident, and the addicts be allowed to die in peace.

[JesseAz]

Thats still a regulation.

[R Mac]

Technically he didn’t say checked by government.

[Roberta]

Because so few people have the radical libertarian perspective that that would work with. So we need to convince people who aren't so libertarian to compromise with us.

[R Mac]

If you’re calling us radical, then saying we should compromise, you might be part of the problem.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

No southern border might also have something to do with it.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

The cops can't even keep illegal drugs out of prison.

So the border would have to be enforced even more strictly than the walls of a prison in order to have any meaningful impact.

Is this what you are interested in?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

That's not what I want. It's what you choose to infer.

But you knew that.

[R Mac]

Are you accusing Lying Jeffy of being dishonest?

[Quicktown Brix]

Silver lining: without the drug war we wouldn't have had Breaking Bad.

Too bad about those 107,000 dead people though.

[Don't look at me!]

If they had only been aborted, things would be different.

[American Mongrel]

I have to assume the fent issue is some kind of hybrid warfare. There is no sane reason that drug dealers/traffickers or cartel bosses would kill of their customers and bring the American military boot down on themselves if this was business as usual.
Something stinks with this whole thing. Idk if the cartels are going to make a sovereignty play or the Chinese are behind it, but it ain't fucking people that make their fortunes off of repeat customers.

[Quicktown Brix]

The reason for the fentanyl is since it is much more potent, it is easier to smuggle, a lot less volume to move across the border. Then you just get your gang member, user/seller or other low-level pharmacist to cut it correctly...cause if they do it wrong...well that could kill you.

[Square = Circle]

The reason for the fentanyl is since it is much more potent, it is easier to smuggle

^ One of the more pernicious effects of the Drug War.

Same thing happened during Prohibition - wine and beer pretty much disappeared, which then made drinking what was available (i.e. the most concentrated alcohol possible) much more dangerous and potentially addictive.

Even the opiate-prohibition is pretty much this same cycle - outlawing opium led to widespread morphine addiction, then outlawing morphine gave heroin its moment before outlawing everything just put whatever happened to be the most potent (and therefore smallest and easiest to hide and smuggle) on top - first heroin, now fentanyl.

If I could time travel, I think the first thing I would do is go back to those arguing for opium prohibition in the nineteenth century and show them what we've had happening since.

"You think you have a problem now?"

[SilverDamsen]

Of course, I'm preaching to the converted when I comment on an anti-prohibition article in Reason. The longer I've been in the anti-prohibition movement the more frustrated I've become that the government does NOT want to end prohibition despite it being so obviously harmful in multiple ways. Even worse, individual academics generally study only a specifically narrow view of "addiction" so that they accidentally or intentionally ignore that prohibition of drugs is the largest and most easily controllable varaible with "addiction" and OD death. The result is that the death toll keeps going higher which then again results in a call for more crack downs which increase the death toll yet again which then is the reason to increase prohibition measures and etc. Anyone who looks at prohibition in historical context will see this. But if those looking at the issue ignore historical context, then they won't see it.

The core problem behind this prohibition is the US cultural idea that the state should tell people what they can put in their body. If the Center and Left could have embraced the logic that drug prohibition was a bad idea because it didn't stop consumption overall but only made consumption more dangerous and that people really did have a right to put substances in their body just because they wanted to put them in their body, It seems much less likely, perhaps not possible at all, for right to have an abortion to have been increasingly limited at the state level and now Roe in danger of being entirely overthrown.

What is fascinating and horrifying about abortion is that in practical terms, it is the same basic concept as drug prohibition. The state has the right to enforce ideas of morality as to what the individual can put in or take out of a citizen's body. People in the US despite saying they believe in "freedom," actually don't really believe in it.

Also, it is a premise or platform idea that the individual has the right to control what is or is not in their body. This premise is a foundation for subsequent ideas of rights, ethics, and morality. But there are going to be predictable and massive problems if a society says that those that have uteri cannot control what is in their uteri.

Of course, "addiction" tries to pretend it isn't a moral issue by saying "addiction" is a health issue, an incurabe disease, but this only compounds the problems associated with drug prohibition and makes solutions more complicated. Society believes that it should intervene if an individual has a deadly disease.

Thus, at the core abortion rights and anti-prohibition agenda are highly similar in their approach to the control the state should have over individual privacy and if people could see this, it would help further the progress of both abortion rights and anti-prohibition activists.

In short, if the War on Drugs ended the premise of ending the War on Drugs would help ensure safe and leagal abortion. Similiarly, if abortion is accepted in society as a right, then it would be easier for the public to accept the idea that the Drug War must end.