The war on drugs has been an utter failure. Nothing about a war addresses the underlying human problems. The worst aspect of it all is that every failure becomes evidence that we're not fighting hard enough. That if we just fight harder, we'll win the war.

Ostensibly, point of the war on drugs is to help the addicts. Yet in most contexts, they get treated with disdain. We provide very little direct help. There's basically nothing to help respectable people, so respectable people don't get help. Instead, they hide their problem until it grows too large to be contained.

It sometimes feels like compassion for drug addicts starts and ends with punishing drug dealers. Maybe it's just easier that way. I think we as a society need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we really did all that we could do to save those lives.

It's much easier to blame all the USA's ills on Mexico and the lack of a wall along the southern border, notwithstanding the volume of drugs that come in by ships and other vectors.

However, the administration has taken action against some of these pharmaceutical industry suppliers. One firm was fined $20 million (payable over 5 years) in return for a deferred prosecution agreement. The President hasn't made much of this in his political speeches, no doubt because of his innate modesty.

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2019/04/23/r...

Yeah, another war on drug producers and traffickers is exactly what we need. It worked wonders with the Mexican and Latin American cartels. It was incredibly successful. Hell a few hundred thousand or so dead Mexicans. That's success, right? Hundreds of thousand of mostly black and brown people in our jails. That's success right? Let's not address the core issues of our fucked up society like poverty, lack of community, lack of opportunity, shitty consumerist culture, etc. No, another war is exactly what we need. Because every "war" and every war America engages in is so successful. Do you even have any idea of what you're suggesting?

I think the other side of the horror is reflected in the employment to population statistics. Look past the statistics and you see millions of hopeless and despondent people. Obama and Trump don't care that these people have reliable employment and enough resources to get though the day without fear. Given that why would we assume they care about people OD'd on opiates?