by Robert M. Traxler
If I were to tell you drug over
doses kill more Americans than guns would you believe it? Well, you should believe it.
The issue we need to discuss today is why the good folks on the left have not mobilized against drugs to the extent they have against guns. Like it or not, the Second Amendment to our Constitution exists, and we have the right to possess firearms, and that angers the left.
The anti-gun lobby spends tens of millions every year to attempt to stop the sale of legal weapons; their rational is that guns kill people. Well drugs kill more people than guns, and the liberal party is nowhere nearly as upset with drug deaths as gun deaths. Guess you are deader from a gunshot than a drug overdose.
The expansion of heroin use is nothing short of epidemic; millions of people start with prescription pain killers, and then as the supply of opioids dries up, they find heroin cheaper and more available.
Watching the coverage of the New Hampshire primary, the pundits were saying that the number one issue in the primary is heroin use. That sounded too strange to believe so I researched the subject and was floored by the numbers. Drug use and drug deaths are a major social factor in New Hampshire — New Hampshire, not California, New York City, or Florida, but New Hampshire. New Hampshire has an epidemic of heroin use and the large number of overdose deaths has scared the good folks in the Granite State.
Our friends on the left side of the political spectrum are pushing for the legalization of yet one more gateway drug, alcohol being the largest, but marijuana is gai
ning in popularity and social acceptance. The numbers of drug deaths should mobilize the left to action; compassion and love for the downtrodden are supposed to be a hallmark of the left, but it is not politically correct to come out against drugs.
The young voters are in favor of legalizing more drugs to some extent, and the left would rather ignore a major problem than lose voters. Indeed, they even welcome more liberal drug laws rather than recognize a politically correct but major cause of the heartbreaking and tragic deaths of tens of thousands of mostly young Americans. According to USA Today, in 2015, more than 44,000 died as a result of drug overdoses, many thousands more than died from all types of firearms.
The President of the United States of America has railed against legal gun ownership but is downright mute when it comes to the larger problem of drug overdose deaths.
In a discussion with a liberal friend, he never failed to make the point the “war on drugs” is a failure and we need to liberalize our drug laws and strengthen our gun laws; perhaps he has it backwards? The compassionate progressive party is solidly against guns but tacitly for more liberal drug laws. Go figure.
Are we reaping what we have sown? Hollywood glamorizes drug use; President Clinton made a joke of his “I did not inhale” illegal drug use and drugs are shown on the media as mainstream, normal and downright fun. One of the main problems is we do not understand addiction and we have an attitude “it’s only a few prescription pills” or “it’s only weed” or “it’s only beer.” Once addicted to alcohol or drugs (especially prescription opioids or heroin), the outcome is rarely good. The massive numbers of the dead attest to the danger, especially to our young folks.
Please look up the facts on guns vs. drugs deaths. Radical left-wing sources like the Huffington post, CNN, and the three TV networks have all reported on the drug death numbers, though normally not in a side-by-side comparison with gun deaths. A side-by-side comparison between gun and drug deaths would be a useful tool in deciding where to expend our limited resources; however, to quote former Vice President Al Gore, it is “an inconvenient truth.”
I attempted to find a number on the minutes/hours spent by our President speaking on guns vs. drugs, but could not find a definite number. It is safe to assume that President Obama has expended many more hours concerned with guns than drugs. Our president has also released a very large number of drug dealers early from prison because they are considered nonviolent. After all, we only have 44,000 more Americans dead per year from drugs than died in 10 years of Viet Nam, or six times the number of Americans who have died in both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan combined to date, each year; we all should be delighted there is no violence involved.
Our friends on the liberal side of the drug control issue should beware of what they wish for, for they may get it. The road to the morgue is paved with good liberal intentions.
If only we could all agree that one way to save lives would be better education and training… of young and old alike… about the improper, irresponsible and potentially dangerous use of and potential consequences of misusing various substances… legal and illegal including over-the-counter and prescription drugs and medicines plus alcohol and other intoxicating agents… along with how best to operate motor vehicles and finally, how best to be a responsible gun owner. Too many lives lost through ignorance and inexperience. As we all discuss how best to accomplish that goal… of saving lives through education and training… oh how I wish we could collectively find a way to stop the pejorative use of the terms liberal and conservative and so forth. Discussing issues of public health when it comes to preventing needless loss of life, ought to transcend politics in my view.
Education and training are indeed important. Programs like D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse & Resistance Education) and “Just Say No” have had inconsistent results. As long as the general public takes their direction from the entertainment industry, combatting social acceptance of illegal substances will be difficult. HB2 channel on DirecTV (505) has an excellent program called “Heroin: Cape Cod USA” which demonstrates that even people who have graduated from rehab programs and survived multiple heroin overdoses continue to use.
Make no mistake; without our guidance, children are more likely to use drugs. Although overall drug use has declined dramatically, drug use by our young people has doubled. Among eighth graders, typically 13 and 14 years old, drug use has nearly tripled. We do not understand all the reasons for these unsettling statistics, but we do know this: While illegal drug use by young people has risen, the number of antidrug public service ads has fallen by more than a third.
In the meantime, movies, music videos, and magazines have filled the gap—and our children’s minds—too often with warped images of a dream world where drugs are cool. We know that the media can powerfully affect our children, for good or ill. That is why we acted to protect our children from tobacco advertisements and why we’ve urged the liquor industry to refrain from running hard liquor ads on television. Now we must take the next step and give our children the straight facts: Drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal, and drugs can kill you.
Young people who have not used illegal drugs by the age of 21 probably never will use them. That’s why we must reach our children with the right message before it’s too late.
“At least 14 people were shot and killed (at the) mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. It’s a shocking number, one that will contribute to a rolling national tragedy: roughly 33,000 Americans every year are killed with firearms (homicides, suicides, and accidents).
In the abstract, it’s hard to appreciate just how catastrophic this death toll is. So we made a chart to make things more concrete. It compares the number of Americans killed by guns between 2001 and 2013 to the number of Americans killed by war, AIDS, illegal drug overdoses, and terrorism combined during the same time period. It turns out that guns killed more Americans than all of those horrors put together: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9446193/gun-deaths-aids-war-terrorism “
Part of an article poster 9 Jan 2016 in the Huffington Post:
“The world can be a dangerous place, but even with all the bad drivers, treacherous heights and violence, more people are dying from drug overdoses than from any other cause of injury death, including traffic accidents, falls or guns.
According to the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdoses were responsible for 38,329 deaths in 2010, 30,006 of which were unintentional. That’s a rate of 105 every day, and that number doesn’t take into account the 6,748 people treated every day for the misuse or abuse of drugs.
In comparison, traffic accidents were responsible for 33,687 deaths in 2010. Firearms killed 31,672 people, and 26,852 died as a result of falling.
The overdose epidemic is not a new phenomenon. The CDC reports that drug overdose death rates have risen steadily since 1992, seeing a 102 percent increase from 1999 to 2010. Drug overdose deaths first overtook traffic deaths in 2009 and continued to grow the subsequent year. Preliminary CDC estimates for 2011 suggest the trend has continued, though the report notes that the final number of overdose deaths may well be higher than the initial reported numbers, due to delays pending investigation of the cause of death.”
I firmly believe we do a disservice to students when we say things like, “use heroin or methamphetamine once and you will be addicted.” Most all young folks know someone who has done heroin or meth a few times and are not addicted. I am not sure drug use is down among the young, nor am I convinced education on its own is very effective.
When I first got into drug interdiction in the 1970s, the belief was that all we need to do is educate one full generation of young, and illegal drugs abuse will decline. We did, it did not, and 2.5 generations later drug use is much greater than it was in the 1970s.
The point you made about tobacco is an excellent one. The entertainment industry and media got behind the anti-smoking campaign, to some extent, as did the education establishment and government. In the 1970s, 80% of adult Americans smoked tobacco; today it is less than 25%.
In more and more local jurisdictions, you can smoke marijuana but go to jail for openly smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol. It appears the liberal governments are encouraging politically correct intoxication, while sending the message some intoxicants/drugs are fine and socially/politically acceptable.
Smoking tobacco is not socially acceptable to most young folks; we need to have an anti-drug effort along the same lines.
After working for a few years in the war on drugs in Asia in the 1980s, I came to believe we cannot stop drugs at the source. We may move the source of production from place to place, but as long as we have demand and a huge profit it is unstoppable.
Law enforcement can reduce the availability and drive up prices, but it will never stop drugs abuse; that is society’s mission.
Re: the tobacco comment – I must give all credit to Bill Clinton from his weekly radio broadcast Oct. 11, 1997.
Now as for traffic fatalities dropping below drug overdoses. Here’s an explanation for part of the difference. Not all mind you – but part. Trauma centers, which see far more near-fatal automobile accidents than they do drug overdoses (think, time and place comparison), have highly skilled and trained medical personnel and equipment which prevents deaths that only a few years ago would have otherwise been lives lost – and coupled with first responder transport times dropping across the country both in terms of motor vehicles and medivac helicopters which would never be used for drug overdoses, the numbers are skewed year in and year out. If anything the disparity increases. Sad to say I suppose but the response times to “traffic accident multiple victims” versus “unconscious person – possible drug overdose” are widely different.
Re: the war on drugs which I believe we’re pretty much in agreement on – and being a libertarian on social issues – I take the position espoused by the late Peter McWilliams in his book “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do” when it comes to so-called consensual crimes: Adults should be allowed to do whatever they want with their own person and property, so long as they don’t physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting anyone else.
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) drug abuse costs are 110 billion per year. Also the crime issue, broken relationships, destroyed families, and drug related disease impacts/harms us all. If you live in a society everything you do impacts the society. Drug rehab costs some 2 to 5 thousand per day; some folks have been to rehab at taxpayers’ expense over a dozen times. Overdose treatment at the emergency room costs tens of thousands of dollars per emergency. We all pay the bill for drug/alcohol abuse, we are all harmed by it.
The Libertarian argument works if we live in a closed society and allow people who hurt themselves to suffer without intervention. To sit by, do nothing and let a person die from a drug overdose is not in our nature.