In 2021, 107,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, a new record
“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” ― H.L. Menken
In 2021, 107,000 Americans died from a drug overdose — a new record. And an increase of 15% over 2020, which had been the old record. No doubt Conservatives will claim we could have prevented these deaths if only the US had completed Trump’s border folly. But, experience and common sense make one thing clear, a wall would have had no impact on the number of OD deaths because supply meets demand. And building a wall does nothing to reduce demand.
Yet right-winger’s solutions to America’s drug scourge always rely on interdiction, with little effort to diminish demand. And that philosophy leads to insanity. Take Trump’s suggestion that drug traffickers get the death penalty. They are already in a business with a high fatality rate. Anyone trafficking drugs has already made it clear that death is no deterrent.
The wall and capital punishment are not the only stupidies offered by someone with a seemingly endless supply. (See: Trump thinks China has a hurricane gun). According to ex-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump wanted to launch missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs. Leaving aside that would be an act of war against an ally, no thinking human being would believe that would do a damn thing to stop the production of drugs.
Consider this, in World War II, German’s GDP increased every year until it peaked in 1944. The more they were bombed, the more stuff they made. Now tell me how bombing drug labs is going to reduce the supply of drugs?
If that is not enough, Prohibition teaches the same lesson. Is there evidence that the consumption of alcohol went down? No. After an initial decline, consumption increased. And this attempt by the government to modify personal behavior proved an expensive and counter-productive waste of money.
The same psychology is behind the anti-abortion movement. The freedom-stripping misogynists of the anti-choice crowd say they aim to reduce abortions. If that is the case, then their approach is useless. Pre-Roe, 100,000s American women got illegal abortions every year. The Guttmacher Insitute estimates that in 1967 there were 837,000 performed in the US.
If you want to reduce the number of abortions, you have to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. You do that by providing comprehensive sex-ed along with free and readily-available contraception. And by giving pregnant, poor women the financial security to raise children. But it is a safe bet that a conservative will resist spending every dime to help women raise children. Paradoxically they will also increase the number of abortions by mandating “abstinence-only” sex-ed while at the same time they also ban contraceptives.
Conservatives claim to be the “pro-life” party of “fiscal responsibility”. Yet they spend a fortune on programs that do not prevent OD deaths. And they promote misogynistic policies that do little to reduce abortion while they hurt women. I do not know which is the worst. That they are too stupid to see they are morons. They are so cynical that they pursue policies they know do not achieve their stated aims but do so for votes. Or they know full well the futility of their approach, but pursue it because they are sociopathic sadists.