by Robert M. Traxler
Let me start by saying alcohol use is dangerous, alcohol is a toxin, a poison.
Fentanyl is killing Americans, mostly young folks, in record numbers. It is coming from Mexico with ingredients made in China, smuggled across the wide-open border. Fentanyl has killed more Americans than Covid-19, if you take into account the COVID-19 deaths books being cooked. Fentanyl is killing sadly mostly young healthy Americans, as COVID-19 killed tragically primarily older folks with pre-existing conditions.
Our nation has become so conditioned to drug deaths that few folks even care. We had a national mobilization over COVID-19, but we yawn when given the figures about drug overdose deaths (118,000 last year), which are higher overall? So, who do we blame for the spiraling number of drug deaths? We blame the Mexican drug cartels who press the drug into pills, we blame the Chinese for selling the ingredients to the cartels, we blame the lack of border security, we blame the drug dealers for selling unlicensed drugs as one drug but containing a lethal dose of fentanyl. We blame everyone but the folks who use illegal drugs, and a woke culture that glamorizes and celebrates illegal drug use.
Perhaps the good non-partisan members of the media will discover the tragic number of drug deaths after the mid-term election, when they will also discover the rise in fuel prices and inflation. Ask yourself: did you notice the cost of food increasing? The cost of fuel, natural gas, propane, and motor fuels going up? But I digress — this is about drug deaths increasing.
A rule of thumb going back to my days in international drug interdiction in the 1980s was that enforcement seizes 10% or less of what gets into our nation. The photo opportunity of tens of thousands of pills or pounds of drugs being confiscated at the border or in a city is nice, but it is a cost of doing business for the international drug cartels; the loss of 10% is baked in the cake of doing business.
So, how do we stop the deaths? How do we save lives? Not through law enforcement, a sacrilege to say, but the truth. If we close the southern border, they will smuggle the poison across the northern border or east/west border, over under or through the border. If it becomes cost effective, they will produce fentanyl in the United States.
We need to wake up and smell reality; as long as billions are to be made in the illegal drug business, as long as we have a huge market for illicit drugs, there will be drugs and drug deaths. Many nations sell opioids without a prescription; in fact, most of the world’s population can walk into a drug store and purchase any drug they wish, and those nations do not have a drug death or addiction epidemic as we do.
We glorify drug use and paint drug users as victims. Governments — state, local, even federal, train people to use illegal drugs in a safer (a relative term) manner. Our popular culture glorifies drug use in music and movies, the “beautiful people” most celebrate illegal and mainstream drug use.
When First Lady Nancy Regan advocated the “Just Say No” program, the enablers for drug use mocked her, the politically correct, woke types laughed at and ridiculed her. As a nation we need to come together and make it not sexy to use illegal drugs; we need to make it unacceptable in our popular culture. The only way to stop the carnage the death rate higher than COVID-19, higher than auto accidents (drugs are the number one cause of death for our young), is to make drugs socially unacceptable. Even people my age continue to celebrate drug use in the worship of drugged out rock stars of our youth, many of whom died young from drug use.
I have come to the realization that the popular culture, the Hollywood types, the musicians, the beautiful people, the professors the very ones our young want to be like, the people they admire, dress like, do their hair like, get tattoos like, purchase, tickets, movies and music from, need to make illicit drugs socially unacceptable. Will they? Not a chance in hell.
The bad boy/girl image sells, and who cares if it kills thousands of our young? Being on the cutting edge of popular/woke culture is too lucrative. The progressives can convince our young there is no difference between a man and a woman; you are biologically whatever you want to be. All white people are borne racist, people who cross the border illegally are not illegal, and inhaling marijuana smoke is not harmful, but they refuse to expend the same effort to convince people illicit drugs are not politically correct.
Shame on them all; they could stop this in one generation, but the money is too good. My opinion.
Mr. Traxler, It’s of interest to me that most of your column attributes responsibility to “we.” But near the end, you switch to “they.” And then you close, as usual, with “My opinion.”
You also wonder “who cares?” Well, I’ll offer that you certainly care enough to write your column, flag your issues of concern, and then share your opinions with us. Your editor cares enough to provide you with this media forum. Your readers care enough to read your column, and occasionally offer their own comments. Some may even volunteer their personal time, resources and leadership to actually help address these issues.
Shame on them all? Ok, if you think that will help, and I hope it does.
Mr. Bergeron,
Sir,
Thanks for the comment. If our nation spent a fraction of the time we as a nation do on wonk indoctrination of our youth the massive drug trade could be canceled in one or two generations. The folks in the entertainment industry glorify illegal drug use as the music industry and others do, make it not wonk and use the mass social media to cancel illegal drug use and we can stop this trillion dollar industry and the death and destruction. Stopping illegal drug use could go the way of tobacco use from 90% of men and 60% of women to 14% to 11% in just over one generation. We made smoking not wonk or politically correct.
Mr. Traxler, thanks for your additional thoughts on this very difficult issue, and also for your past work on drug interdiction back in the ’80s.
Unfortunately with regard to drug and alcohol abuse, the private industries you mention will likely continue to chase their almighty dollars, and fight for their right to do so. I suspect they’ll be supported in that regard by today’s “don’t tread on me” crowd, which always argues for less government, less intervention, less taxation, fewer laws, fewer restrictions on business, and more individual freedom for everyone to say, do and consume whatever, and as much as they wish.
I’ll take your points regarding the influence of woke/wonk/popular cultural on alcohol and drug abuse. Yet with few exceptions, those very same cultural influencers, our Hollywood movie stars, our pop musicians, all the sexy and beautiful people on our magazine covers, our social media influencers, and our professional sports heroes, have long promoted “ideal” physical attributes such as beauty, fitness, athleticism, and slender body weight. If we just do as they say, then why is our nation among the world’s leaders in obesity and associated adverse health impacts? Why aren’t we all slender, fit, handsome and beautiful, just like our cultural thought leaders?
Actually, I think your column closes with the key issue: “… but the money is too good.” The decline in cigarette consumption happened not just because of increased health awareness, education, and gradually enlightened pop culture messaging, but also from some very intentional government interventions and laws that restricted cigarette advertising and distribution, set purchasing age limits, reduced addictive components, and increased consumption costs through taxation. Uh oh!
So will shame alone be enough to convince your free-market capitalists, your biblical and constitutional originalists, your “don’t tread on me” flag-wavers, and your woke/wonk/pop culture icons, that it’s finally time to end alcohol and drug abuse in our country? I wish it could be true. But I suspect that ending such abuse will require finding ways to either hurt or fatten the pocketbooks of the moneymakers in that pipeline. And in this day and age, good luck with that.