The US is now undergoing a crisis of drug overdose nationwide. The country makes up only 5% of the world's population, but consumes 80% of the world's opioids. Drug overdose deaths in the US have exceeded one million since 2000, and in the last few years, there have been more than 100,000 such deaths annually.
In fact, the nation has declared war against drugs, but it has turned out to be a major failure. It started with Plan Colombia in the late 1990s, a multi-billion dollar aid package aimed at combating drug trafficking in Colombia, which involved significant military assistance and the deployment of U.S. military personnel and contractors.
Critics argued that this was less about combating drugs and more about asserting U.S. influence in the region and combating communist insurgencies. Decades of militarized source control have only pushed drug organizations to other countries for production and trafficking, ultimately failing to reduce the supply of illicit substances.
According to David Herzberg, Director of the MA in Drugs, Health and Society Program at the University at Buffalo, history shows that this kind of intervention very rarely, if ever, works to actually protect people from the dangers associated with drugs. Not just Plan Colombia, but a number of different interventions whose goal was to stop the supply of cocaine coming from South America to the US have repeatedly failed over the course of the 20th century.
"These plans have contributed to making the problem worse in a lot of ways because when you stop one line of supply while you still have a lot of demand, a lot of other people will step in to create new supplies. Because there's a moment of competition," said Herzberg. "The established supply is down, and competition selects for the most effective drug businesses, and oftentimes this is a condition of illegality. That's often people who are willing to be violent. That's people who are better at evading the police and so on."
It is sadly that, instead of concerning themselves with the lives and health of the people, American politicians are even allowing more tolerance for drugs as a gateway to political and economic interests.
In November 2020, Oregon Governor Kate Brown even signed Measure 110, making the state the first region in the US and even the world to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of 'hard drugs' such as heroin, cocaine, and meth. The measure was repealed in 2024, as policymakers were blamed for putting political interests such as re-elections over facts and Oregonians' well-being.
Under the Biden administration over the past four years, there have been some harm reduction policies to curtail the rising opioid fatalities. From setting up "legal injection sites" to giving out drug-taking tools and first-aid kits, these harm reduction measures still failed to effectively address the drug abuse crisis.
"It's unfortunate it's being tolerated, which it shouldn't be. At this rate, I think we need somebody literally to come in and do something drastic because if not, this is spreading like wildfire," said Frank Rodriguez, a former heroin user now working as a local Anti-Drug Activist in Philadelphia. "Now everybody knows somebody who has died because of drugs, and it's only gonna get worse. It's not gonna get any better, so something has to be done. Like I said, we're gonna lose a whole generation of people."
Soon, Trump is set to get back into the White House, having stated many times he will take action against drugs, but no specific approaches have been found in his policy platform to combat drug abuse. Taking that into consideration, the ongoing toxic cycle of drug abuse in the U.S. would remain an unsolved puzzle.
Reporter | Guo Zedong, Zhan Manqi (intern)
Video editor | Liang Zijian
Graphic designer | Lai Meiya
Editor | Yuan Zixiang, James, Shen He
