Joe Rogan I believe talked about this on his show the other day and speculated that this is a result of fentanyl laced cocaine. Fentanyl is so cheap and requires such a small dose you can turn 1 kg of cocaine into three, nearly tripling your profit. This is an unintended result of the US drug war and will probably result in a reason to continue the US drug war. If people could buy cocaine with a prescription, they wouldn't be getting laced cocaine.

There are no easy answers, but the path we are currently following with the drug war seems worse than if we didn't do anything at all.

Having said that, the Omar character on the Wire was very well acted.