The war on drugs is ramping back up. nnAfter a decade in which the aggressive, overly tough talk that had characterized three and a half decades of anti-drug rhetoric is back in the form of President Donald Trump’s new anti-opioids campaign.
Trump, during a stop in New Hampshire in March, plans a mix of approaches, including the death penalty for drug traffickers. As the AP reported, “Trump called for broadening education and awareness about drug addiction while expanding access to proven treatment and recovery efforts. But the backbone of his plan is to toughen punishments for those caught trafficking highly addictive drugs.”
Trump, echoing the dictators he seems to admire most, struck a belligerent tone.
“This isn’t about nice anymore,” Trump said, according to the AP. “This is about winning a very, very tough problem and if we don’t get very tough on these dealers it’s not going to happen folks. ... I want to win this battle.”
This language is straight out of the drug war handbook. Richard Nixon kicked off the assault in the 1960s in an effort to smear anti-war protesters and urban African Americans and build his law-and-order brand. Ronald Reagan took it a step farther in the 1980s, classifying drug use as the single largest threat to the United States this side of the Soviet Union.
Bill Clinton and both Bushes added military weapons to this metaphorical war, turning it into a real military conflict.
This get-touch approach did little to stem abuse, but it did result in the militarization of cities and an explosion of he prison population. The school-to-prison pipeline was now a central facet of American society, along with SWAT teams and police departments that view the cities they patrol as territories that need to be occupied.
Barack Obama tamped down the rhetoric, and the nation as a whole began to rethink the punitive approach it had been taking. Treatment and decriminalization were now on the table. Several states had legalized medical marijuana and several more had legalized the drug for recreational use. In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy won the governor’s race as an open and unapologetic pro-pot candidate.
Donald Trump’s rhetoric flies in the face of these trends. While he acknowledges the need for more treatment and awareness, his get-tough mantra — which is his go-to on nearly all issues — is likely to do more harm than good.
Forget his call for a death penalty for traffickers. A version of this is already on the books and is rarely used because the logistics do not allow it. The issue here is his push to remilitarize drugs, to take off the restraints and let the police state do its thing.
This will only worsen our criminal justice failings, increase the targeting of people of color, and it simplifies a complex problem by reducing blame to a single, stereotypical bogeyman.
The reality is that there are numerous, overlapping issues in play that we need to understand better. There is a pain management problem: Are we overprescribing? Does there need to be better monitoring of prescription opioid use? Should insurance companies be prevented from cutting patients off without a plan of treatment being put in place? What might we prescribe instead of opioids? Many who become addicted start with a prescription and then spiral when cut off, only turning to the black market as a last resort.
What role does Big Pharma play in this? The pharmaceuticals industry profits from the prescribing of the drugs and may not have been totally truthful about their impacts. They are not the pushers and traffickers, but their aggressive marketing techniques — the doctor’s office visits, TV and print advertising, etc. — have helped drive an increase in prescription rates that only started to fall in 2014 when questions first started being raised.
And should the drug taker bear some responsibility for the use and abuse of these drugs?
An approach that treats this as primarily a criminal matter will only drive the use further underground. It will make it less likely that those caught in the cycle of abuse will seek help. Presidential leadership and presidential language matter. Talking tough may be attractive to some voters, but it is not a solution.
Hank Kalet is a journalist and poet in central New Jersey. Email, grassroots@comcast.net; blog, hankkalet.tumblr.com; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Twitter, @kaletjournalism and @newspoet41.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2018
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