Thirty-six years ago I served as the deputy general counsel to President Reagan’s White House Conference for a Drug Free America.
Similar problem. Similar nonsolutions.
What to do? Crush fentanyl’s 70,000 annual deaths through systematic prosecution for possession as a civil violation.
Fentanyl is so profitable that mere suppression of supply can't work. Back then, as now, officials would periodically announce crackdowns.
Soon thereafter, some cop ends up making a felony arrest of the child of a pillar of the community, ruining the dopey kid’s life forever. Enforcement stops.
I call America’s failed anti-opioid policy “fentanylism.” Fentanyl nihilism.
Not, despite the posturing of Donald Trump and other bellicose Republican presidential wannabes, invading Mexico. That’s as bad an idea as nuking hurricanes.
Who really smuggles fentanyl? Recently, one of the leaders of the white nationalist “unite” the “right” deadly Charlottesville rally committed suicide while awaiting sentencing for … smuggling fentanyl.
He was paid a $214 fee for smuggling slightly under $500,000, street value, worth of this deadly drug. Per The Washington Post:
“A man wielding a tiki torch with neo-Nazis and white supremacists … killed himself on the same day that his trial for a federal drug trafficking charge was set to begin.
“Teddy Joseph Von Nukem, 35, died on Jan. 30 at his home in southwest Missouri when he was supposed to go to trial in Arizona on charges of trafficking fentanyl across the Mexico border. He was arrested in March 2021 for allegedly having more than 33 pounds of fentanyl pills in his vehicle….
Wait, what? Fentanyl… being smuggled by a white nationalist?
Not “illegal aliens”? Per Cato Institute, only two undocumented migrants out of 10,000 apprehended “possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.”
Me? I’m an anti-fentanyl hawk.
Victory can be achieved by, and only by, demand suppression … through systematic user prosecution. Yet systematic prosecution is politically (and socially) possible only if the penalty for possession is reduced to a persuasively stiff fine.
Alas, a candidate proposing reduced (thus sustainably enforceable) penalties can be slandered as “soft on drugs”… and lose her election. This very vicious cycle caused a dear friend’s son, a good, charming, talented, well-beloved and otherwise well-behaved college freshman to lose his life … to fentanyl.
Adieu, Max. The world now is now vastly poorer for our loss of you.
Fentanyl, much more potent than heroin, is a leading cause of death of our youth.
Possession demands a real, rather than theatrical, solution: de-escalation (NOT legalization) from a felony (and maximum security prison) to a violation (and stiff fine).
That de-escalation would enable the desperately needed systematic user prosecution.
Will we do what it takes?
Probably not. Per NPR’s WAMU:
“The cartels just keep getting stronger, fueled by fentanyl profits … The first time the U.S. can do anything about these drugs is when they cross the border, almost always passing through official checkpoints hidden in cars or commercial trucks driven by American citizens. … Former President Donald Trump considered a terrorist classification for the cartels and reportedly entertained the idea of missile strikes against drug labs inside Mexico. The Biden administration has resisted that kind of escalation, and Rep. [David] Trone [D-Md.] agrees that it would be a grave mistake. … The U.S. is actually seizing record amounts of fentanyl in drug busts, but the drug is so cheap to manufacture, the cartels just make more.… According to [Rep.] Trone (co-Chair of the House Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force), a more promising strategy is to focus on reducing American hunger for drugs.”
Mr. Trone is right about going after the demand side. He goes astray by defaulting to “education, … treatment, … prevention.” None have been shown to work at scale.
OK, let’s do those too. And let’s make fentanyl test strips, which can prevent overdoses, and Naxaloxone, which can save overdose victims, ubiquitous.
Not enough.
We need to use “tough love” … prevention by reducing possession to a violation with a really big fine and systematically enforce it. That’s the most plausible way of reducing demand.
So long as, instead, our politicos make systematic user prosecution politically impossible by imposing cruel and unusual punishment for possession, the massacre of our kids will continue.
I’m a conservative, not a libertarian. I do not support legalizing fentanyl.
What to do? A stiff fine scaled to household income, regularly enforced, would be effective.
Stochastic felony user prosecutions won’t damp down a $16B/year marketplace. With that kind of payday there’s 100 new wannabe kingpins for every bad guy we take down.
De-escalating penalties and escalating prosecution? Alas, unlikely. Per WAMU:
“Most drug policy experts … say public fears about fentanyl will likely raise political pressure in Washington for a tough response on the border, whether it’s effective or not.”
“Whether it’s effective or not.”
Adieu Max.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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