Why increased marginalization and mandatory minimum sentences will never solve the opiate addiction epidemic

Jeff Sessions desire for a “tough on crime” approach will solve nothing about the opiate epidemic

The War on Drugs is an abject failure. Prohibition has never successfully stemmed the tide of the illicit drug trade, nor will it ever. Human appetite cannot vanish into thin air through wishful thinking or regressive legislation. We are filling up our prisons every day with non-violent offenders, giving them criminal convictions with felonies that prevent them from ever rejoining the workforce.

Narcotics such as heroin and crystal meth, have infiltrated even maximum security private prison industries. If prohibition cannot keep drugs out of lockdown penitentiaries, prohibition will never accomplish anything but a failure on the streets. Drug dealers don’t care about checking ID, so keeping Marijuana illegal is a farce because it has made the drug easier for children to purchase and use, despite the potential dangers in IQ of daily cannabis abuse before the age of 21.

Narcotics such as heroin and crystal meth, have infiltrated even maximum security private prison industries. If prohibition cannot keep drugs out of lockdown penitentiaries, prohibition will never accomplish anything but a failure on the streets. Drug dealers don’t care about checking ID, so keeping Marijuana illegal is a farce because it has made the drug easier for children to purchase and use, despite the potential dangers in IQ of daily cannabis abuse before the age of 21.

The only way to stop these criminals is to starve them of their supply, expose them in the open, regulate, legalize, and tax the trade, funneling all profits into advancing our archaic addiction science into the 21st century where it belongs, not in the dark ages of faith healing alone. Faith and medicine must co-exist in the 21st century; both are vital assets to recovery from substance abuse, yet America is still tied to faith healing as a proper treatment for addiction when it is far from sufficient. Every addict has different needs in recovery.

For some, moderation of certain substances is the best choice, while abstinence is best for others. Therefore, pigeonholing the mentally ill into a “One-Size-Fits-All” policy is a disgrace, because it will ensure that few underlying diagnoses remain ever discovered, because the subconscious attitude behind this cruel policy is, “Oh all these hopeless addicts are all the same, lock them up and throw away the key! Murder them in the streets, once all the junkies die, our problem with addiction will end.” Dead wrong.

A drug abuser who gets sober with no meaningful purpose or structure that gives them happiness or a chance for stability, outside of substance abuse will rarely moderate, let alone abstain from drug consumption for long. For far too long, America’s approach to addicts has either been to lock them away in jails, with mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately incarcerate and ruin the lives of African Americans every day, despite white people consuming equal rates of drugs. Or, addicts become forcibly shoehorned them into underfunded, ineffectual rehabs stuck in the 20th century, 12 Step dogmatic ideologies that subconsciously enforce toxic attitudes in recovering individuals of powerlessness and dependency over self-empowerment and self-sufficiency, without them even realizing it.

Our current presidential administration, however, does not care at all. They only care to appear “tough on crime,” they care nothing for the mentally ill, for by gutting the Affordable Care Act, Trump is ensuring that the opiate epidemic will get exponentially worse, never better. Jeff Sessions is an ethnocentric malignant narcissist, who will never change, and is incapable of any humanity, let alone empathy. The fact that such a racist, backward man is now the head of our criminal justice department is a national disgrace, and if his policies take hold, America will return to the dark ages of the drug war, and the only winner will become heroin. Trump’s compliments to Rodrigo Duerte’s genocidal campaign against his citizens, many impoverished and addicted to crystal meth, is further testament to the evil which lurks behind the Oval Office, ready to strike at any moment. America cannot return to the dark ages any longer.

Public opinion of marijuana has transformed dramatically in the 21st century, and many no longer view it as a gateway drug to hard drug abuse. If anything, I would argue our real gateway drugs remain alcohol, tobacco, and prescription painkillers, all far more dangerous substances. However, no substance taken in excess is ever harmless, including marijuana, and such notions need to become forever dispelled to bring the concept of legalization out of the underground and into the sun where it can breathe.