Tag: opioid epidemic

Thanks for nothing, DEA. Fifty years later, drugs are deadlier and more abundant than ever

As of this week, the United States has “enjoyed” half a century under the thumb of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a wing of the Department of Justice established in 1973 by former President Richard Nixon. Instead of truly addressing the deepening drug problem in the U.S., the DEA has worsened public health outcomes related to drug use, promoted racially stigmatizing policies, stomped on civil liberties and burned stacks of cash in a vain effort to control the uncontrollable.

There’s no denying the drug situation in the U.S. is dire. Approximately 1 million people have died of overdoses since 1999, many of these deaths driven by powerful opioids like illicit fentanyl and its many analogs. Nonetheless, polydrug use — the mixing of multiple substances — is a far more lethal combination than any drug on its own, as well as the true underbelly of this drug crisis disaster.

Despite decades of increased funding, more seizures and more policing, the DEA cannot seem to make a dent in this crisis. The body count from overdoses continues to rise, and there’s no end to the flow of drugs into the U.S.

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Portland’s Multnomah County to give fentanyl users tin foil, straws, pipes to smoke drug

The county covering most of Portland, Oregon will be distributing tin foil and straws to fentanyl users in the city. 

According to a local report, the Multnomah County Health Department will be distributing the drug paraphernalia along with glass pipes for smoking meth and crack as well. Along with those, “snorting kits” will also be made available. 

The Oregon Legislature passed a bill that decriminalizes the distribution of drug paraphernalia if the materials are for harm reduction purposes.

It has not been signed into law by the governor of Oregon yet, however, residents of Portland have reportedly become frustrated about the situation with regards to drug use. Many reports have shown an increase in fentanyl overdoses as well as a growing number of residents wanting to bring back criminal penalties for the open use of drugs. 

Spokesman Sarah Dean, of Multnomah County, confirmed with Willamette Week that the policy to distribute the “smoking supplies” is new. Dean said that the rise of fentanyl being smoked instead of injected has decreased the demand for “harm reduction” services related to overdoses. 

Dean said handing users smoking supplies discourages them from injecting the drug, which is also a vector for disease. She stated, “Several decades of research have also shown that providing supplies for safer drug use does not increase illegal drug use.”

The amount of fentanyl in the county, according to Dean herself, has risen substantially. A policy that was going to criminalize and limit the use of fentanyl itself was dropped after being introduced by Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland just recently. 

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Florida Bans Medical Marijuana in All State-Licensed Rehabs and Sober Living Houses

Last week, Florida legislators passed a law that will narrow the state’s medical marijuana eligibility. While the change might seem marginal, it’s a step in the wrong direction.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading contender in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, signed S.B. 210 into law. The bill pertains to substance abuse treatment programs licensed by the state, like rehabs or sober living residences. It adds language to Florida law that beginning in 2024, licensed treatment facilities must enforce “a prohibition on the premises against alcohol, marijuana, illegal drugs,” and prescription medications not prescribed to the person taking them. The text further clarifies that it “includes marijuana that has been certified by a qualified physician for medical use.”

Medical marijuana use in an addiction treatment or sober living facility is controversial. Cleveland House, a South Florida sober house, states on its website that if one resident is smoking pot, it could negatively impact another resident’s recovery. But studies increasingly suggest that marijuana can help alleviate symptoms of opioid addiction. Men’s Tribal House, a sober living facility in Utah, actively incorporates medical marijuana use into the recovery plans of half its residents.

In 2016, more than 70 percent of Florida’s voters chose to expand the state’s medical marijuana program. Under previous state law, only patients with “cancer or a physical medical condition that chronically produces seizures or severe and persistent muscle spasms” qualified, and only for doses low in THC, the principal psychoactive component in cannabis. The 2016 ballot measure, later passed into law as S.B. 8, expanded eligibility to include a variety of conditions like Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anything that caused “chronic nonmalignant pain.”

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Drug Busts Are Linked to More Overdoses and Deaths

As the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) celebrates its 50th birthday, new research highlights how counterproductive its mission is. Published in the American Journal of Public Health, the research links drug busts to a spike in overdoses in nearby areas.

The cross-university team of researchers started out with this hypothesis: “Law enforcement efforts to disrupt local drug markets by seizing opioids or stimulants are associated with increased spatiotemporal clustering of overdose events in the surrounding geographic area.”

To test this hypothesis, they looked at data from Marion County, Indiana, on drug seizures and overdoses—including fatal overdoses, emergency medical calls for nonfatal overdoses, and naloxone administration—in 2020 and 2021. Marion County is the largest county in Indiana and contains the state capital, Indianapolis.

They found a significant association between “opioid-related law enforcement drug seizures” and an increase in drug overdoses in surrounding areas (that is, within 100, 250, and 500 meters). This association held at one week, two weeks, and three weeks from the drug bust data.

“For example, the expected number of fatal overdoses within 500 meters and 21 days of opioid-related drug seizures ranged from 18.0 to 22.7 per 100 drug seizures, so the observed rate of 23.6 was higher than expected,” the paper states.

Stimulant-related drug seizures were also associated with an increase in drug overdoses, albeit to a lesser extent than with opioid-related drug seizures. The significant association here only held “at a distance of 100 meters within 7 days,” and was stronger for nonfatal overdoses.

During the two-year study period, there were 2,110 opioid-related and 3,039 stimulant-related seizures—an average of seven per day. There were 1,171 overdose deaths recorded during that period (an average of 1.6 per day) and 12,590 nonfatal overdoses (an average of 17.2 per day).

“Supply-side enforcement interventions and drug policies should be further explored to determine whether they exacerbate an ongoing overdose epidemic and negatively affect the nation’s life expectancy,” the researchers suggest.

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They Followed Doctors’ Orders. Then Their Children Were Taken Away.

One morning in the summer of 2020, Jade Dass woke up and vomited. She assumed she was hung over; she’d been depressed lately and sometimes self-medicated with too much wine. But then a woman in her online counseling group suggested that she might be pregnant. Dass looked in the mirror and realized she was probably right.

At 26, Dass had spent the previous 10 months in recovery from an opioid addiction. Her boyfriend of three years, Ryne Bieniasz, was in recovery, too. Since getting out of rehab in 2019, they had been trying to re-establish their lives, but they had trouble finding work and a place to live. Eventually they made their way to a remote horse farm east of Phoenix, doing odd jobs in exchange for housing. They didn’t have a car or close friends or much in the way of family support. Even so, Dass longed to be a mother; she thought she would be good at it.

To help with her recovery, Dass had been taking Suboxone, a medication that binds to the receptors in the brain that crave opioids, preventing withdrawal without creating a high. She was concerned that it might affect the developing fetus, but a health care provider, she says, assured her that she should continue taking it. The advice seemed counterintuitive; pregnant women are routinely urged to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, even ibuprofen. So Dass did her own research. Everyone from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the same thing. Pregnant women with opioid addiction should be encouraged to take doctor-prescribed synthetic opioids such as buprenorphine, the main component of Suboxone, or methadone, which has been used to treat heroin and other addictions for almost six decades. Weaning off these medications could trigger withdrawal and contractions that could result in a miscarriage, premature birth or cause a person to relapse.

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Bombing Mexican Cartels Won’t Stop Fentanyl

Americans continue to overdose on illicit fentanyl despite increased seizures of the drug coming north from Mexico. Several prominent Republicans are suggesting that the U.S. respond with wartime tools such as airstrikes and troop deployments. But combining the war on drugs with the war on terror is a surefire recipe for costly engagement abroad and little progress in reducing fentanyl-related harm at home.

During his presidency, The New York Times reported last year, Donald Trump expressed interest in using missiles to attack Mexican drug cartels and destroy their labs. Reps. Mike Waltz (R–Fla.) and Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas) helped revive that idea in January, when they introduced a joint resolution that would authorize the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against “foreign nations, foreign organizations, or foreign persons” involved in fentanyl production or trafficking.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) argues that the military should “go after these organizations wherever they exist.” Several GOP presidential hopefuls, including former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have echoed that sentiment.

There is little reason to believe these strikes would be as precise or effective as proponents claim. “Even a campaign of air strikes against cartels could easily escalate,” says Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities. “Cartels could retaliate,” he notes, and “strikes are bound to fail to affect fentanyl shipments, let alone meaningfully damage cartels.”

Mexico hawks like Waltz say the U.S. has “done this before,” citing Plan Colombia, a Clinton-era counternarcotics and counterterrorism initiative. But “claiming that Plan Colombia was a success is just plain false,” says Javier Osorio, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona whose research focuses on criminal violence in Latin America.

When the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) “demobilized after the peace agreement in 2016,” Osorio says, coca cultivation “skyrocketed.” He notes that “it’s even higher than before the U.S. started conducting aerial eradications” of coca fields. A similar counternarcotics program in Mexico, the Mérida Initiative, has been “a total disaster,” Osorio says: It has not stopped drug trafficking, and years after the initiative began, Mexico’s top law enforcement official was still “in bed” with the Sinaloa cartel.

The war on drugs has helped turn Latin America into the most violent region in the world, leading to increased black market activity and corruption. “If airstrikes miraculously kill off a cartel, another will fill the gap,” Friedman says, “likely with considerable violence between criminals as the market shifts.” According to Osorio, “There’s always going to be someone willing to kill and die for supplying drugs when there’s such a huge market.”

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Kentucky’s Risky Million-Dollar Bet to Fight the Opioid Crisis With Psychedelics

On the steps of the state capitol building in Frankfort on May 31, the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KYOAAC) announced the launch of a new state-funded program that would aim to help stem the damage and destruction wrought by the ongoing opioid crisis that has devastated the lives of millions and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But the new initiative wasn’t simply to throw more money and resources into tried-and-true public health programs.

Instead, the commission announced it was going to explore allocating tens of millions of dollars toward studying and promoting the use of the controversial, plant-based hallucinogen ibogaine in psychedelic-assisted therapy to combat the opioid crisis, as well as treat a host of other mental health issues. The goal is to make Kentucky the first state in the nation to pursue a clinical program around ibogaine—currently legal only in Mexico and New Zealand.

“This administration recognizes that the opioid epidemic is one of the most tragic and visible symptoms of spiritual affliction which pervades our society,” Bryan Hubbard, chairman and executive director of KYOCC, told The Daily Beast. “We must do better. We must explore every possible avenue which holds the potential for improvement.”

The news was lauded by advocates of psychedelic-assisted therapy, an increasingly popular form of mental health treatment.

“With yesterday’s announcement, Kentucky is taking a bold leadership role to addressing the opioid epidemic,” Jesse MacLachalan, state policy and advocacy coordinator for Reason For Hope, a psychedelic therapy advocacy nonprofit, told The Daily Beast. “This is a prudent and measured approach to explore innovative solutions to the greatest addiction crisis our country has experienced in its history. We applaud the Bluegrass State for the example they are setting for states across the country.”

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L.A. County Gives Crack Pipes to Homeless to Prevent Fentanyl Deaths

Los Angeles County has begun distributing pipes used for smoking crack, methamphetamine, and opioids to the homeless population, hoping to discourage them from overdosing by injecting themselves with fentanyl.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the grim phenomenon Tuesday, which has divided homeless advocates:

By a line of ragged RVs slung along 78th Street in South Los Angeles, a seven-member team passes out glass pipes used for smoking opioids, crack and methamphetamine.

Part of the front line of Los Angeles County’s offensive against the deadly fentanyl epidemic, the group hands out other supplies: clean needles, sanitary wipes, fentanyl test strips and naloxone, medication that can reverse an overdose.

…

Fentanyl, which is laced in everything from weed to heroin and meth, was present in more than half of the nearly 1,500 overdose deaths of homeless people in 2020-21. In response, Los Angeles County this year increased its harm reduction budget from $5.4 million to $31.5 million. Most of the money covers staffing and programs; officials said that only a fraction of county funds — no state or federal money— goes to pipes.

Some believe that the pipes merely facilitate addiction; others argue that they slow the rate of drug intake.

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DRUG WAR TACTICS WON’T STOP XYLAZINE DEATHS

Over the past six months, national and local media have flooded the news cycle with stories about the “horrors” of xylazine, a non-opioid animal tranquilizer increasingly found mixed with fentanyl, sometimes to deadly effect. Outlets including the New York Times and CNN have trafficked in graphic portrayals of xylazine use, even calling it “the zombie drug,” a term advocates say fuels stigma and punitive measures against people who use drugs.

Indeed, amid this wave of sensationalized coverage and broader concerns that xylazine is driving up overdose rates nationwide, lawmakers have responded by rushing to criminalize possession of the drug. But critics fear the current push against xylazine is repeating the cycle that led to its rise.

Four states, Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have already added xylazine to their lists of controlled substances. Proposed legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate would criminalize some xylazine possession at the federal level and increase funding for law enforcement to “crack down on its spread,” in the words of one of the bill’s sponsors.

This official response to xylazine mirrors tactics that have been used for decades in campaigns against emerging “drugs of concern.”

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The Republican Primary Consensus for Sending the Military Into Mexico

When Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.), a comparatively affable chap in the context of contemporary GOP politics, announced his 2024 presidential bid on Monday, the speech was predictably full of the upbeat, anecdotal, ain’t-America-grand stuff that Scott, like generations of Republicans before him, has made central to his political career.

Then things suddenly turned dark.

“When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist,” Scott vowed. “I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall, and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that’s exactly what they are.”

Scott’s bellicosity was no mere bolt from the blue. As Reason has been documenting for six years now, Republicans, even while otherwise souring on U.S interventionism abroad, have increasingly concluded that the alarming spike in domestic fentanyl overdoses would best be treated by sending the military into Mexico.

Donald Trump first floated the idea, while he was president, of designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations—thereby allowing for extraterritorial prosecutions, enhanced investigative powers, and increased penalties for domestic drug-related crimes—in March 2019, but held off after the government of Mexico repeatedly objected on grounds of sovereignty while making uncooperative noises about transnational migration policy.

But the appetite for corralling cartels into the otherwise-unpopular war on terror was only beginning to rumble in the conservative belly. Trump himself in the summer of 2020 twice asked then–Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” according to Esper’s 2022 memoir. Notable MAGA politicians Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) have both suggested violent interdiction south of the border, as have a bevy of more traditional hawks. There are a handful of escalatory bills bouncing around Congress.

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