reposted from alibi V.21 No.8 | February 23 - 29, 2012
The Drugs Are Winning
We’re using more than ever
By Samara Alpern
New
Mexico is the longtime world heavyweight and still national champion in
deaths by drug overdose. But lawmakers passed a landmark memorial that
could put a dent in the yearly death toll. The measure,
SM 45,
is a formal state request that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Center for Health Policy study the effectiveness of medically supervised
injection facilities. There are none in the United States, but 27
around the world serve as clinical settings for users to inject illegal
drugs.
Whether
the controversial approach is the best way to deal with our substance
abuse problem remains to be seen, but the fact that New Mexico is
willing to look at new methods is worth celebrating. Despite the drug
war, abuse remains at record levels, and the bodies are piling up.
It
was 1971 when Nixon first declared war on drugs. A lot of vets were
coming back from Vietnam shooting heroin, and those needles
were
really freaking people out. To the patriotic highball set,
criminalizing the hell out of substance abuse was a sensible strategy to
take that seedy element off the streets.
To
a certain degree, the plan worked. In terms of turning users into
criminals, the war has been a spectacular success. Per capita, the
U.S. incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other country on Earth. More than Russia. More than China. This year’s distant runner-
up for prisoners per capita: Rwanda.
Since Nixon named drugs public enemy No. 1, the U.S. prison population has increased by more than
700 percent. Apparently, there are a lot more people into drugs than just counterculture deviants.
Are we really this sick? This unhappy? This weak?
Though
there is no language explicitly targeting any one group, minorities
have clearly been the big losers in the war’s justice lottery. To use an
old-
fashioned term, it’s racist. African-
Americans are
13 times as likely to go to jail as white people for the same drug offense, and today, more African-
Americans are caught up in the criminal justice system than were
enslaved on the eve of the Civil War.
This
tactic doesn’t seem to be having much impact on the street market,
however. Though we are smoking, snorting and shooting slightly less than
we did in the ’70s, the U.S. is still the
biggest consumer of illegal drugs
in the world. And when you consider how many people are reaching for
legal pharmaceuticals, the fact is today—after more than 40 years of
drug war, millions of incarcerations and record levels of overdoses—we
are consuming more drugs than ever.
Over the counter sales are up, too, from $2.9 billion in 1971 to $17 billion in 2010, according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association.
While
the criminal justice system is culling vast throngs of miscreants who
turned to drugs to solve their problems, our medical system has been
promoting drugs as the answer to everything from depression to limp
dick. We’ve got a whole slew of drugs to help you get off the other
drugs. We’ve even got drugs for people who were born with sparse,
bald-rat eyelashes. Hallelujah for modern medicine! The lashless will suffer the indignity of applying mascara no more!
Spending on legal prescriptions doubled from 1999 to 2008, when the grand total came to $234.1 billion. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports
that nine out of 10 elderly Americans took some kind of prescribed
substance in the past month. Our nation’s children are also apparently
terribly ill, with one out of every five kids under the age of 12 taking
at least one prescribed medicine in the past month.
This
is the crisis of today: Nationwide, overdose deaths doubled in the last
decade thanks to the surging popularity of painkillers. For the first
time in history,
ODs outnumber traffic accidents as cause of death.
Pills are responsible for more overdose deaths
than heroin and cocaine combined. It’s a worldwide epidemic, but as the
most medicated country in the world, America is leading the trend. And,
of course,
New Mexico has the highest overdose rate in the country.
Which brings us back to that measure up in Santa Fe. The memorial calls for a study into several harm-
reduction
strategies, including medically supervised injection sites for
intravenous users. While controversial, such programs have been proven
effective in reducing overdose fatalities while increasing access to
drug treatment programs and health services. Hopefully the study will
help guide New Mexico away from its heritage as the likeliest place in
America to die of overdose. Our state government’s unanimous support for
the memorial should be applauded for seeking alternatives to the
clearly ineffective drug war.
But even the most innovative harm-
reduction
programs do nothing to address our nation’s fundamental problem: We use
drugs for everything. That is the underlying pattern of behavior
causing us true harm. Are we really this sick? This unhappy? This weak?
And, if so, are drugs really the answer? When we toss back those little
pills, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Why?
