2023-05-05 13:30:00
Let’s suppose USA gives the category of terrorist organizations to the cartels of the drug Mexicans, as so many Republicans demand. Let’s imagine that you deploy a “Cyberwar” and attacks with missiles against their bossesdeclare war on the cartels and send troops across the borderwhether or not the Mexican government agrees. And after that?
Here’s a clue: the fentanyl will follow killing Americans; in 2023 more than in 2022; in 2024 more than in 2023. And so the trend.
The war on drugs has always been, in the best casea futile approach to the substance abuse epidemic sweeping the US In fact, it has most likely exacerbated the crisis, pushing drug dealers towards more potent and lucrative narcotics with which to lure vulnerable Americans into addiction.
Door-to-door fentanyl: a Customs dog discovered the drug in a mail shipment to Miami
The arrival on the scene of fentanyl, that is easily cooked in a makeshift kitchen And it’s so compact that a couple of truckloads can supply the entire US market, the hoax revealed. The thirst for blood of the PRepublican party does not change the reality that fentanylin the words of John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, is “unstoppable.”
“The danger is that, faced with this new type of drug, we feel more and more frustrated,” he said. “We are going to attack. We will literally militarize the response and that will have no effect on the real problem.” Even if Washington manages to recruit to China and Mexico to deactivate the current fentanyl pipeline, it will be reconstituted in any other place. It is too easy. And it is that, on the other hand, the US market is too lucrative.
The American strategy to fight illegal drugs failed a long time ago. Cocaine and heroin on the street were cheaper in 2020 than 10, 20 or even 30 years before, according to the UN office that tracks such materials. That is not what happens in a market in which the supply of the merchandise is reduced. what fentanyl has done in the last two years is to expose the absurdity of this policy.
What is fentanyl, the lethal substance targeted by deaths from poisoned cocaine
Before, Washington could at least argue that it had identified a source of drugs to apply its strategy of get rid of the root problem. He could point out poppy fields to burn and coca plantations to fumigate. He could identify plausible routes on which to focus law enforcement and catch the ringleaders to prevent the drugs will arrive a EE.UU.
But the fentanyl does not depend on the harvest of some crop in a distant field. There is no Bolivian field to fumigate. Today, the precursor chemicals come from China. But they could come from other places. And every time a l is prohibitedlot of chemicals, fentanyl can be made from others. It can even be manufactured in the same US territory.
One might expect the fentanyl focus attention on the drawbacks of the supply strategy favored by Washington. What is not taken into account, of course, is that the drugs that arrive in the US supply a consumer market quite large, lucrative and dynamic. As long as that market exists, the offer will exist.
As Walsh points out, the strategy has been worse than futile. Aggravates the addiction of the country. The ban encourages providers to ramp up power to circumvent enforcement and create a more addicted market to serve.
Pound for pound, cocaine turns out to be much more lucrative and easy to transport across borders than cannabis. Fentanyl beats them all.
Alternative policies are no secret. For years, Western European countries have deployed so-called harm reduction interventions and other strategies focused on purchasing first, to alleviate the harm that drugs cause to its citizens and, second, to address addiction directly, treating it for the disease that it is.
In Portugal, once known as the heroin capital of Europe, harm reduction strategies have reportedly declined, opioid use and HIV infections, as well as incarceration rates among drug-related offenders. Today the UK suffers 15 times as many drug-related deaths as Portugal; in the US, there are 55.
Unfortunately, the US is already deep in the political season of 2024. These types of strategies are not muscular enough to gain any kind of traction in a Republican Party eager to get on TV beating bad guys with lethal weapons.
Harm reduction strategies have been around for a long time. But the American political system has found it very more attractive to focus on the theory of evil aliens that poison America’s youth. “The political payoff of the aggressive and warlike stance against drugs is even more potent than fentanyl,” Walsh said. “That’s never going to change.”
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