Sunday, January 08, 2023
Sunday Reflection: Addiction, 2023
I teach criminal law. And because I teach for people who are going to be practicing in the real world (as opposed to the bizarre-o world of the Model Penal Code, where there are no narcotics or gun crimes), I talk about drugs and addiction a lot. Even if you aren't going to be prosecuting or defending cases involving drug crimes, addiction and drug use play a role in much of the rest of criminal law. Victims and offenders in violent crimes, for example, are often under the influence of narcotics at the time of the crime, and narcotics use is a frequent trigger for violations of probation. If you want to know about criminal law, you better know something about drugs.
Our biggest drug problem right now is opioids, which killed over 100,000 Americans in 2021 through overdoses and which have negatively impacted millions of lives. Legally prescribed drugs like Oxycontin are the gateway drug here-- that is how people get hooked.
In the old days, back in 2015, people often slid from Oxycontin to injecting heroin to death. Then cheap Fentanyl flooded the streets, replacing heroin with an even more deadly results (Fentanyl is generally stronger than heroin). Most recently, we've seen Fentanyl combined with Zylazine, an animal tranquilizer, replace straight Fentanyl. Zylazine has a terrible impact on the human body, creating oozing sores and causing the need for amputations. Can it get worse?
Of course it can. And it probably will.
This is a national crisis, and one where we need to avoid the mistakes made in the past. Incarcerating people won't affect markets, as we seem to finally be recognizing. If we are to win, we have to reduce demand, and that is very hard to do.
Is the demand for these drugs the result of a spiritual crisis? Maybe, for some users. But the larger spiritual crisis is in our collective inability to work together to reduce demand.
