The Overdose Crisis: America's 3rd World Problem

Fentanyl addict sheltering in a former church in Kensington, PA

After watching Vice's recent report on "Basuco," I was reminded of the absolute depths the black market will sink to just to make a buck.  Basuco, labeled The World's Cheapest Drug by Vice, is a substance popular among Colombia's poor that contains cocaine paste plus byproducts leftover from production of the drug such as kerosene, lead dust, chloroform, sulfuric acid & other toxic chemicals.  In this report, witches were hired to sit in the trap houses & bless the dealers' drugs & guns, praying for their bullets to "be blessed" and hit the right people.  In Jesus' name.  

It would almost be funny if it wasn't so terrifying.  See for yourself:

Basuco:  The World's Cheapest Drug

In Kinshasa, Africa, addicts desperate to escape their bleak reality steal car motors & scrape up the powdered exhaust from catalytic converters to snort.  They call the toxic grey substance "bombe" and claim it has a calming effect that causes them to stay frozen in a standing or sitting position for hours.  What this is doing to their brains & bodies long term, nobody knows.  It's a totally new behavior even among folks who use inhalants or other extremely dangerous/volatile substances recreationally. 

In another part of South Africa, a concoction called "whoonga" is all the rage.  It consists of any combination of the following:  low-grade heroin, strychnine, HIV medications like Efavirenz, cocaine, asbestos & other unknown fillers.  Among other things, increased risk of drug-resistant HIV is one possible outcome of abusing anti-retroviral medications in this way.  Whoonga is often sold as marijuana which means users often aren't expecting the toxic high they get.  

And of course everyone's heard of krokodil, the nightmare drug named for the way it turns the user's skin into something resembling crocodile skin.  The medical terms for these effects include thrombophlebitis, ulcerations, gangrene, and necrosis which often leads to amputation & death.  This Russian phenomenon is a result of amateur attempts to convert codeine into desomorphine, a heroin-like drug.  Done incorrectly as it often is by impatient addicts in a hurry to get their next fix, it contains caustic impurities that eat away flesh in a similar way to MRSA or straight up battery acid.

Coming full circle back to Colombia, we find the latest drug craze:  "2-CB" aka Pink Cocaine.  Sadly the drug is neither the psychedelic 2-CB nor cocaine but a potentially deadly concoction of random drugs ranging from stimulants to opioids like oxycodone or fentanyl to ketamine.  The pink color is merely a marketing ploy achieved with pink food coloring.  Do users care?  Apparently not if you ask the giddy clubbers ingesting it.  This drug isn't confined within the borders of Colombia & is being exported everywhere the cartels can sell it including the U.S.  Only time will tell if it takes off.

Hold Your Judgment

If these toxic drug trends make you gasp in horror, they should.  But no more than what's happening right here at home.  Between 2020 & 2021 we lost over 100,000 precious Americans to overdose, most of them in their peak productive & creative years.  This is an all-time record... more than died of drug addiction/overdose during the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the drug-drenched '60s and '70s or ANY time in our 245 years as a nation.  And it's all because of a preventable issue:  adulteration of the black market drug supply.  What started with a nasty prescription painkiller problem spread like a cancer to total adulteration of the black market drug supply, with everything from heroin to cocaine to fake Percocet, Xanax bars & MDMA now containing fentanyl.  And if that wasn't bad enough, fentanyl isn't even the worst adulterant out there--now we've got an entirely new, more potent & totally undetectable class of drugs to worry about:  the nitazenes.  (Though opioids aren't the only culprit:  the U.S. also has its own bizarre & horrifying drug trends like "wasping" to contend with).

America has some of the most draconian drug laws on Earth, which creates an insatiable demand for every single drug that's banned.  Combine that with the fact that we border an impoverished, highly-populated region (Mexico & South America) & you have a recipe for disaster.  We want drugs, they need money.  Do the math, capitalists.  It's basic supply & demand economics.  Harsh drug laws artificially inflate the price of said drugs by making them a hot commodity that carries risk to handle, thereby making drug dealing an obvious career choice for people who are dirt poor & have nothing to lose, no other career prospects & no real chance of legally immigrating to the U.S. (a country with equally draconian immigration laws).

Only One Way Out

"Brave" cops pose with drugs, a bunch of $1's & a single $2 bill in now-deleted post

The solution to this problem is painfully simple:  legalize, regulate & educate.  Remove the profit motive from these criminals who sell poison using violent tactics.  Nothing else will stop them.  Lock one up and the Consigliere just moves up to Underboss & the Underboss is promoted to Boss.  This cycle is infinite as long as the profit motive remains.  No matter how many pounds, kilos or tons of drugs you seize & pose with (or in the case of the cops above--half-grams & singles), it's a grain of salt in a sea of dope.  And our lawmakers know it.  The only reason this charade continues is to justify the racket of the 3-letter agencies & everyone else who currently profits by keeping certain drugs illegal.  

As for the demand side of the equation, governments lack the political will to address that because it's too complex & would require sustained investment--financial, physical & emotional--in the people & communities who voted them into power in the first place.  They'd have to admit that the very premise of the war on drugs is fatally flawed, that poverty & addiction shouldn't be punished with incarceration & that you can't legislate morality.  As long as someone's bad habit isn't harming another person, it's better to let them engage in it peacefully in the privacy of their own home rather than busting the door down, arresting them & letting the criminals take over whatever vice they were using when you busted in.  As scientists learned from the Rat Park study, individuals whose environments are lively & enriching are far less likely to become addicted in the first place; in fact, they actively fight against using drugs even in the face of painful withdrawal symptoms.  This suggests it's neither the person nor the drug that's to blame for addiction but the environment.  

And the environment in America has been steadily becoming more hopeless for too long.  

When entire industries are outsourced overseas to the lowest bidder and roads, bridges & buildings fall into total disrepair; when the minimum wage hasn't risen since July 24, 2009; when a Bachelor's degree is worth what a free high school diploma used to be worth & corporations are allowed to gentrify neighborhoods so only the very wealthy can afford to live there, that's when hopelessness & addiction take hold.  Drug addiction is a symptom of a deeper problem, not a standalone problem to be singled out & punished.  Any official or media figure who isn't willing to address the root causes has no business speaking on the opioid crisis or any other aspect of the "addiction problem".  

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