Let's end the War on Drugs and bring peace to the addicted
In the States, we all get high. We LOVE sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, weed, opioids, inhalants, coke, and smack—In that order. The best hope is that no one hurts anyone other than themselves.
Driving that train, high on crack cocaine
Back in the day, we could hop on a train in Menlo Park when we were twelve, without our parents knowing, and spend the day in San Francisco. Our primary mission was to procure bottle rockets, firecrackers, cherry bombs, and any other cool fireworks we could discover. We would negotiate for our wares on the backstreets of Chinatown in a warehouse behind a popular Chinese Restaurant. San Francisco also offered a ton of other fun, like hanging from the cable cars, watching street entertainers, and eating sourdough bread with fresh clam chowder on the Wharf. Never once on these journeys from the train, across South of Market, through downtown, North Beach, the Marina, anywhere, did we have a bad experience or cross paths with a drug addict. We would see an occasional 'bum' down on his luck but felt more compassion and humility than annoyance or fear.
If my same posse of 12-year-olds were teleported to the streets of San Francisco in 2023, while we might be impressed by the ubiquity of Star Trek phones, we would be scared shitless. It would be like walking into the Apocalypse. What happened between then and now is complicated, but in many ways may be summed up in one word—drugs. It all started in the 1980s and the early 1990s when drug entrepreneurs invented crack because it is cheaper, more intense than regular coke, and highly addictive. Sadly, this product plan was a very effective way to create a customer base to the severe detriment of the local community. As soon as crack cocaine hit the scene, East Palo Alto, in our own backyard, became the murder capital of the US due primarily to crack-related homicide.
The US is the demand for what Colombia sells
One of the things you learn when wandering the streets of another great city, Medellin, as I did for two months this spring, is that the Colombians don't like talking about Pablo Escobar. As most of us know, thanks to Netflix, Escobar was one of the most violent, brutal, ambitious, and powerful drug dealers in modern history. To Colombians, Escobar is not only associated with at least 4,000 murders on his own, but he is a symbol of a 25-year era of indiscriminate violence between drug lords, right-wing guerillas, left-wing paramilitaries, and an overwhelmed government. To the naturally generous, faithful, optimistic, well-put-together, and quick-to-smile Colombian people, all this craziness is not who they are, and they have had enough of it.
Colombia has seen a vertiginous 97 percent drop in homicide in the 30 years since Escobar died in 1993. As a comparison, Medellin's murder rate in 2021 was 11.3 per 100,000, above Los Angeles's 10.1% homicide rate, San Francisco's 6.9 rate, and New York's 3.4 rate, but below 38 other major US cities. Medellin is now a popular tourist destination. In 2022, 6 million tourists visited Colombia, up from 4 million the previous year.
Operation Orion and Comuna 13
Comuna 13, or San Javier, the hillside barrio in Medellin, Colombia, was once a lawless battlefield considered the most dangerous neighborhood in the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Comuna 13 location and construction, with its warren of makeshift housing clinging to the hillside, provided easy access from the mountains to the San Juan Highway for moving cocaine into the city and procuring new weapons.
On October 16, 2002, with the encouragement of the then Mayor of Medellin, Luis Perez, newly sworn-in President Alvaro Uribe sent in fifteen hundred members of the National Army, Metropolitan Police, and the Special Antiterrorist Forces, two helicopters, and one tank into Comuna 13 to 're-establish order." 'Operation Orion's’ goal was to wipe out the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the People's Armed Command (CAP).
Reminiscent of the self-governing favelas of Brazil, these illegal groups controlled Comuna 13 by acting as judges to settle disputes and decide who lives and dies, who is a thief, and who gets paid back for being a victim. The expansion of these heavily armed groups also created a national problem since their wars killed people daily, which turned Comuna 13 into a battlefield for over a year.
The neighborhood's 100,000 residents were caught in the crossfire, resulting in arbitrary detentions, disappearances, and hundreds of injuries. During the first week of the raid, the National Center for Historical Memory estimated that Orion resulted in 250 arrests, 70 deaths, 34 wounded, and 300 missing.
Undoubtedly, the government forces committed several human rights violations during Operation Orion, such as torture and illegal detention. Still, it marked the beginning of the end of violence in the precious city. Today, Comuna 13 is one of the least violent areas in Medellin, with a homicide rate well below the city average. Comuna 13 also enjoys a booming tourist business and its colorful streets are walked by thousands of people from all over the world each year.
The drug wars damn near destroyed a whole country and the the 'City of Eternal Spring.' Ironically, it wasn't law enforcement or declining demand that ultimately turned this insanity around, but an unofficial, mutually beneficial pact between narco gangs, paramilitaries, and the security services. Killing each other was bad for business, so they cut it out.
But as a person from the States, my big enlightenment was to recognize and affirm that the Colombian drug horror story is our story because we were the demand for their supply. Our thrill-seeking and addictions put Pablo Escobar in business. The US accounts for 30% of global cocaine consumption, with 90% of the coke we snort originating in Colombia.
We have also done nothing positive to correct this situation, and any progress toward peace has been achieved through Colombian self-healing. So, no matter how we want to spin the story in the Netflix fiction series, we live with blood on our hands and owe it to everyone to get to the root of the problem and care for our addicts and cure the demand.
A war that can never be won
In 1971, for reasons of public health and social control, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse and the heroin epidemic "public enemy number one in the United States." President Ronald Reagan would later coin the expression "War on drugs." Yet another big and complex subject, but my view is the US’s inbred puritanical nature convinced us that if we don’t outlaw the use of some socially taboo set of drugs, we are therefore condoning the use of those drugs, and this results in more people taking drugs. It’s false logic. It is the same logic used with prostitution. As history shows, when you try too hard to suppress something, it just pops up and rears its ugly head in some other form. The War on Drugs has reared two ugly heads, the Cartels and the gangs, and prostitution’s ugly head has been sex trafficking.
Thirty years and billions of dollars later, Colombia produces and consumes more Cocaine than ever. So does the planet. Between our flailing and ineffective drug war, and the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle, where at least 937,000 people were killed, including 387,000 civilians, and 15,000 US service members and contractors, it leaves one wondering if any war can ever really be 'won.'
In May 2003, the day President George W. Bush declared the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Pope Benedict XVI (then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) prophetically said, "There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. Given the new weapons that make possible destructions beyond the combatant groups, we should ask ourselves if it is still licit to admit the existence of a 'just war.'' I agree with the former Pope, who died last December, and that view should extend to the War on Drugs. If the goal is to protect innocent lives, then going to war has only achieved the opposite since World War II.
The top 10 drugs we love in order (stats for 2020/21)
Sugar—We are the 12th fattest country out of 226 on the planet, with only Kuwait and a few Polynesian islands ahead of us. Over a third (36%) of the people in the US are officially obese, and we have the worst diabetes rating in the Western World. All this causes a higher risk for COVID, other cases of flu, and pandemics. The overconsumption of sugar-infused 'food,' polished off with soda pop, is a big part of this dire health condition.
Alcohol—The most dangerous drug is alcohol. 10% (28.3 million) of people aged 12 or older reported struggling with an alcohol use disorder (AUD), AND 140 million reported drinking alcohol monthly. By far, alcohol is the most abused substance in the US. In 2021 alone, alcohol-related deaths rose nearly 34% to over 52,000, not including 56,000 deaths caused by chronic liver disease or cirrhosis. 10,511 deaths annually are attributable to drunk driving.
Nicotine—8.5% ( 23.6 million) of 12 or older Americans reported struggling with a Nicotine addiction. Vaping devices have caused a significant uptick in nicotine use amongst young adults, with 21% (or 57.3 million) 12 or over having used tobacco or vaped in the last month. Tobacco use claims more lives than any other addictive substance, with 480,000 deaths yearly.
Marijuana—Marijuana is the most widely used 'illicit' drug. 5.1% (or 14.2 million) of Americans aged 12 or older had marijuana use disorder, with addiction rates growing due to increasing potency by over 60% in the past decade. Among people aged 12 or older, nearly 18% (or 50 million) reported using marijuana in the last year, including 7% of 8th graders, 17% of 10th graders, and 30% of 12th graders.
Opioids— 1.1% (or 2.7 million) of Americans aged 12 or older had an opioid use disorder, primarily obtaining codeine, Vicodin, and oxycontin opioids by prescription, not drug dealers. Opioids remain one of the most significant public health crises in the country. In 2021, opioid-related deaths rose to a staggering 100,000, a nearly 30% increase from 2020.
Inhalants—1% (or 2.4 million) of Americans 12 or older had an addiction to inhalants (e,g, glue, helium, and nitrous oxide). Inhalant addiction is hazardous because inhalants are volatile toxic substances that are intense and have immediate consequences, including hospitalization or death.
Cocaine— 0.5% (or 1.3 million) Americans aged 12 or older reported having a cocaine addiction, with 2% (or 5.2 million people) reported using cocaine in the last month. However, rates of Cocaine addiction in the US are dropping. Crack cocaine, cheaper and more intense than regular cocaine, is responsible for many crippling addictions, deaths, and ruined lives.
Heroin— 0.3% (or 902,000) of Americans 12 or older reported struggling with a heroin addiction, and use has been growing in the US, particularly among young women. More alarming is the growing presence of fentanyl-laced heroin that heightens the effects. 13,165 people died from an overdose involving heroin; many cases are believed to have also involved fentanyl
Stimulants— 0.2% (roughly 500,000) of Americans 12 or older had a Stimulant use disorder. Stimulants range from prescription drugs, such as Adderall or Ritalin, to meth. These drugs are highly addictive and have intense withdrawal symptoms. 6.6% (or 16 million) of US adults used prescription stimulants in the last year, with 2.1% (or 5 million) misusing them.
Benzodiazepines— 2% (5 million) of Americans prescribed Benzodiazepines reported misusing them. "Benzos." such as Valium, Xanax, and Klonopin, are prescribed to manage conditions like anxiety and stress and are especially dangerous because of their powerful impact on the brain's chemical makeup.
Barbiturates— 0.2% (or 500,000) of Americans 12 or older had tried them before. Millions of Americans use prescribed Barbiturates, mainly sleeping pills like Lunesta and Ambien, to treat tension and sleep disorders. Sleeping pills can produce mind-altering effects that lead to continued abuse.
Drugs, alcohol, and incarceration
The US currently incarcerates an astounding 1.68 million people. Only communist China has more prisoners than we do. When you look at the facts, there is a vast cross-section between taking drugs and landing in jail. Half of all homicide convicts were under the influence of alcohol when they killed someone. Twenty-six percent of all arrests are for drug-related crimes, including 32,000 charged with marijuana-related offenses. Most of the people in prison abuse alcohol and drugs and were drunk or high when they committed their violent crimes.
Drugs and crime quick facts in 2021
1.68 million—people currently incarcerated in the US.
1.6 million Americans are arrested annually for drug-related crimes.
415,000 (26%)—The number and percentage of all arrests in America for drug-related crimes.
32,000 people are arrested annually for growing or selling marijuana.
244,000 Americans are sent to state and federal prisons annually for drug-related crimes
316,032 Americans are arrested annually for drunkenness.
7,334 homicides (32%) annually have alcohol as a contributing factor.
48% of homicide convicts were drinking before they committed murder.
10,511 deaths annually are attributable to drunk driving.
80% of prison inmates abuse drugs and alcohol.
If you commit a violent act or violate another person's rights in any way—whether drunk, on drugs, or sober—it is just to be punished and even thrown in jail. The problem is our legal treatment of people who consume drugs is out of whack in two significant ways. First, like over-eating, abusing alcohol and drugs is an act against oneself, yet not necessarily a legal infringement on others. Second, most drugs we love, and abuse are freely sold in stores or obtained by prescription. So what is the reasoning for why some drugs are legal, and others are not? If we lay all our drugs on the table and compare the individual and societal health impact of each versus the other, then compare how each is treated under the law, there are huge disconnects. For example, alcohol is statistically the most dangerous and harmful drug, yet available and celebrated throughout our culture. On the other hand, most people don't shoot heroin or smoke pot and then run out and kill someone. The whole system is begging to be re-examined and rewritten.
Here is the conundrum, the combination of our ravish addictions and a puritanical War on Drugs has created a rippling effect of disaster that led us to our Apocalypse. To solve our drug addiction problems, we must confront the whole situation honestly, with humility, and with our eyes on the afflicted. This is where we currently stand:
By outlawing drugs for personal use, we created a multi-billion black market opportunity that gave rise to the murderous Cartels and fostered a network of brutal and savage gangs.
Rather than treat addicts as people who have fallen through the safety net that need our help, we stigmatize them and treat them as criminals, if not animals.
This attitude, and our legal system, force addicts to go underground and engage in theft to buy their 'illicit' drugs from Cartel and gang-connected sellers at artificially high prices.
The black market drugs business is so lucrative that competitors kill each other and innocent bystanders all day to protect their street corners and market turf.
By pushing addicts underground, they are often afraid to seek help from family, friends, and public agencies, which drives up homelessness rates. Approximately 38% of all homeless people abuse alcohol, 26% abuse drugs and two-thirds of homeless veterans suffer from alcohol or drug abuse.
When you roll all this activity dynamically together, you get a spiraling wheel of disasters. More addicts mean more theft and illicit drug buyers, which feeds the Cartels and gangs, which increases the homicide and violent crime rates, which puts half a million people in jail each year and doesn't do a bit of good for the addict! So we went to war, we are still at war, and there is not a single prominent politician in our country who wants to end this war. It is time for people to take back the power and save their own communities.
The War on Addiction
To foster a sustainable Mother Earth, we must first start by taking care of ourselves and each other. Some 72,700 people in families with children were experiencing homelessness in 20 of the largest cities in the nation as of last January, a 37.6% jump from a year before. As noted, most of these folks have alcohol or drug-related problems. To stop the War on Drugs and its spiraling destruction, we must first give families in need our full attention and resources.
Since 2000, the United States has devoted much of its $11.6 billion in Colombian aid to eradicate, fumigate, and other security operations against traffickers to reduce the amount of processed cocaine reaching US shores. Despite that, coca crops have reached record highs in recent years. How can this be argued that this is not a completely wasted investment? If you were to take that $11.6 billion in 'aid' and divide it by the 72,000 homeless people in the US, that is $160,000 per person.
Let's have the strength to admit our failures and redirect our entrepreneurial energy toward putting downward pressure on demand and commoditizing supply. Let's invest billions in rehabilitating our addicts and homeless and break the black market by taking over the supply.
Follows is a straightforward, two-part approach to making this necessary to turn around the addiction problem and reverse its mayhem. Up front, allow me to state that any programs and approaches suggested here would be voluntary. There is no need to revisit the totalitarian 'round-up and relocate' programs of the 20th Century that killed millions. At our core, part of self-esteem comes from the faith we live in the land of the free.
Produce and distribute government-funded heroin. A Vancouver, Canada-based supervised drug consumption site profiled in the highly recommended PBS special, Love in the Time of Fentanyl, captures the death reality of the opioid crisis and how a renegade grassroots harm reduction center has saved lives. We need to replicate this model and create similar centers in the US wherever needed. But by providing addicts with supervised heroin, you bring addicts above ground to be counseled and cared for, guaranteed safe and clean dosages free of fentanyl. Addicts are relieved of the pressure of waking up every morning worrying about how they will secure and pay for their drugs. This arrangement also encourages an environment of safety, health consciousness, less thievery, home invasion, and panhandling, and, importantly, takes the supply of these drugs out of the hands of bad actors committing violent crimes.
Love in the Time of Fentanyl
The documentary follows the volunteers at the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) space in Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside neighborhood. As in most North American cities, fentanyl has eclipsed heroin as the dominant opioid sold on the street, which also means, given the nature of that deadly drug, more addicts are dying on the streets.
On a typical day, volunteers wander the Eastside neighborhood, sandwiched between the affluent sections of a very prosperous city, seeking addicts that might need a hit of naloxone and oxygen to stay alive or other emergency assistance. On the pioneering and, to some, the controversial side, OPS also offers a walk-in space where addicts can test their drugs, pick up clean needles, and even get government-produced heroin with supervision to ensure no lives are lost. We also forget there is such a thing as a functioning addict. Not all people who work at the OPS also use its services, but some do.
OPS is a great model of a family-like community environment where harm reduction workers, drug users, neighbors, and friends work together to keep people alive. This approach breaks the stigma of addiction by empowering drug users and making them part of the solution. OPS also proves that problems are best solved by people closest to where the problems exist because it's more personal, and everyone has a stake in succeeding.
Create "Conservation Corps" communities on publicly-owned, farmable land throughout the US. With the US military and self-sufficient monastic communities as the models, addicts and the homeless could join a stable community dedicated to conserving themselves and Mother Nature. These communities would include an OPS center to deal with the addicted, and like the Army and Monasteries, offer standard work clothing, a bunk bed, healthy food (much of which is produced on the compound by the members), nutrition and health counseling, and a daily routine of chores and income-producing activities, and a place to receive mail and have friends and family visit. The self-sufficiency model would be much like the many cloistered monasteries worldwide, whose communities produce much of their food using modern organic and permaculture techniques and run businesses, such as producing whiskey to grass-fed beef and buffalo mozzarella.
Profitable and sustainable communal living
Most monastic communities farm and maintain their properties and operate some form of specialized business to cover the overhead.
The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, operate a self-sufficient Monastery farming the land and making and selling religious vestments and altar linens. When the sisters aren't hard at work on the monastery grounds, they're topping the charts with albums of sacred music. Their five classical music albums all hit the top of the charts, including one that received Billboard's Classical Artist of the Year Award.
Catholic monks throughout Europe make and sell liquors, beers, and wines to travelers, using recipes they have cultivated and perfected over centuries. Today, Trappists produce beer in 14 monasteries, most spread across Europe—with one residing in the United States. Other countries with Trappist brewing operations include Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, England, Spain, and France.
At the Abbey of St. Walburga, in the Rocky Mountains, just 5 miles south of the Colorado-Wyoming border, Sister Maria-Walburga Schortemeyer and her fellow nuns run the abbey's ranch. At the ranch, the sisters are busy attending to and nurturing cows, water buffalo (for milk and mozzarella cheese), and llamas, and raising chickens and bees. The biggest moneymaker on the Farm comes from selling grass-feed, natural cattle beef. "We have a corner on the market—The only nuns selling natural beef. People just kind of believe in it," says Sister Schortemeyer with a laugh.
The key theme to these two proposals is we encourage addicts and homeless people to join open, healthy, and caring environments that provide a sense of community and boost their spirits and self-esteem.
It all begins with what choices we make in life
As I observed at the very beginning of this post, 'drugs' is the word that summarizes how a large swath of San Francisco turned into a hellhole. It is not the drugs themselves, or even the addicts, that is the problem; it's how we have dealt with the drug trade that is the problem.
Each of us and our children must confront the spectrum of drugs, starting with sugar and saturated fat-infested 'food,’ and make choices. And whatever we choose will impact how many extra health problems and related burdens we will have to take on as we try to lead our life. But if the War on Drugs has taught us anything, treating people who abuse drugs like criminals has only created a path strewn with wreckage from Comuna 13 to San Francisco. Eating shitty, drinking too much, and smoking kills more people than cocaine. How we look at all, this doesn't make sense. It's time for a major reboot.
I have never found a truly content person on this planet who, at one point, did not have to confront and exorcise their demons. Until we look down into the abyss, underneath all our temptations and grief, and utter the words of Jesus of Nazareth after his forty days of prayer and fasting, “Get behind me, Satan,” there can be no peace. For many people, a drug is their Satan, and we can help them with love and community. But they are much harder to help when running from the law, dealing with gangsters, prostituting their bodies, or rotting in prison. It’s a reasonable request to give up some glorious, publicly owned land, redirect some War on Drugs money, and give 72,000 of our neighbors a chance to have a home, till the earth, work as a community, rejoin society, and rise and shine. It will cost a lot less than $160,000 a head and pay much higher dividends; you can bet on that.
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