[flagged]
Is it perhaps possible that you were placed into a medically-induced coma in 1971? If so, then congratulations on awakening here in 2023, a lot has changed. However, I regret to inform you that the US has been furiously fighting a war on drugs for 50 years, and the result so far has been unequivocal, ignominious defeat for the US.
High schools have thousands of students, three overdoses in a year doesn’t seem that high to me. (As depressing as that is)
A student overdosing at school would have been nothing short of shocking and would have brought down the entire town on the school
Crime of many categories will always exist, that doesn't mean we should give up on policing.
I'm not talking about policing or crime in general here, or "giving up on policing" or whatever you're implying. This seems like a non-sequitur.
I want us to reshape our conversations about drugs to focus on health impacts, and throw away the dumb war metaphor that has twisted a public health problem (drug abuse can hurt you) into a multi-generational, multi-billion (-trillion?) dollar "police action" that has shown no path to a solution.
No kids were hospitalised for alcohol poisoning when you were at school?
The war on drugs was lost long ago, that approach failed hard - that's why we are here.
This happened all the time, you just never heard of it when you were growing up. China and Bangladesh are doing nothing other than murdering a random drug mule. Corruption allows drugs to flow in and out of especially China really easily. The reason why Cartels are so powerful is exactly because of the war on drugs. The industry is highly profitable and because it is illegal it is driven only into the hands of criminals.
The only solution is liberal policies that allow people to seek treatment or at least give them access to safer drugs.
We have been liberalizing our drug policies for the last 20 years, and especially in the last 10. In that time, the number of annual drug overdose deaths has increased by a factor of five. I used to agree with you a decade ago about drug policies. But the math clearly has proven me wrong.
> The US has 20 times the per capita death rate from drug overdoses than Bangladesh.
More people are rich enough to buy hard drugs in the US.
> It has 30 times the opioid addiction rate of Singapore.
Singapore is a city not a country.
> We have been liberalizing our drug policies for the last 20 years
No you haven't. You can still go to jail for weed in many states in the USA.
> . In that time, the number of annual drug overdose deaths has increased by a factor of five.
Driven by the over-prescription of opioids by pharmaceutical companies like Purdue.
> I used to agree with you a decade ago about drug policies. But the math clearly has proven me wrong.
So murdering a random drug mule is the correct solution.
Could this be a statistical issue? Were drug deaths systematically mischaracterised when we were full war on drugs?