OD'ing on the Drug War

Drug wars are fought on the premise that drugs are dangerous. And many illegal drugs are dangerous, because no one but the smugglers and the pushers controls their strength and purity. There's no oversight because everything happens underground, in the criminal sphere, outside of health regulators' control.

If drugs were legal (that is, taxed and regulated, and overseen by the FDA), the effects of recreational substances would be as safe and predictable as the effects of a spoonful of Robitussin. Until then, users of illicit drugs will continue to die — not from heroin or crack per se, but, in a very real sense, from the consequences of a doctrinarian drug war that has always killed more people than it's saved.

Pittsburgh Police and the Allegheny County Medical Examiner are trying to determine a potential link between nearly two dozen drug overdoses over the last few days. Channel 11 sources say most of the victims abused heroin and purchased it in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood. Investigators are also examining whether this version of the dangerous illegal drug was laced with something making it even more deadly.

According to our NBC affiliate in Detroit, 50 heroin users overdosed and died over the last two weeks; that's just in Wayne County, Michigan alone. The Wayne County Medical Examiner may have a lead on the cause. He told WDIV-TV that the possible problem stems from the manufacturers mixing the heroin with the powerful pain killer, fentanyl.

I've written about the necessity to legalize drugs before, at greater length, here.

Comments

[SteveHeath]

Thanks for the astute observations. Just more reasons why we need to get drug dealing off the streets and into a licensed and regulated environment.

Steve Heath in Clearwater FL
Media Relations
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
http://leap.cc/tbay

[K. Dale Boley]

I'm all for legalizing. FDA and regulators from the fed? not so much.

[SteveHeath]

My mention was certainly no endorsement of either the FDA or federal oversight in general. It was simply a stated preference for commercial production and commercial regulation of in-demand drugs to be subject to some form of regulation rather than none whatsoever. Thanks...SH