Yesterday my wife Ann, posted this: “Today would have been Jamie's 40th birthday, but drugs and alcohol stole his life in 2017. His three beautiful children live on as his legacy. He would always say he liked living life on "the edge" and didn't want to change, so he went out doing what he liked to do ...party-on, Jamie.” Jamie died from a cocaine/fentanyl cocktail. Any Parent who has lost a child to drugs is left with a hole in our hearts and the unanswerable question of what more could we have done. Not a simple question.
Item: CDC 11/17/2021 – “…there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before.”
Item: 6/17/21-Pittsburgh, “…twenty-five individuals have been named in two separate, but related, Indictments for trafficking multiple drugs, including heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and cocaine base, Acting United States Attorney Stephen R. Kaufman announced today….”
Item: NEW YORK, Dec 16 (Reuters) – “…A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family who stand accused of helping fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, a decision that threatened to upend the bankruptcy reorganization of their company, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP….”
There are two sides to Jamie’s story. His personal struggle with addiction. And then there is the supply chain that delivered to him an easily accessible and endless supply of ultimate death. There are an estimated 5-6 million hard-core addicts in our country with overall American spending on illegal drugs estimated north of $60 billion per year. The Sackler family alone, made $12 billion by pushing OxyContin. Yet the state of affairs is that the “Jamie’s” die, the low-level dealers go to jail and those at the top of this “off the books” economic sector negotiate court settlements that still leave them billionaires. Not to mention the supply chains out of China and through Mexico that are now so mixed into the legitimate economy, that unraveling it is near impossible. The “war on drugs”, that Nixon began, is being won by those who have developed the drug economy into a major economic enterprise.
When we have a criminal enterprise dealing with this much money, corruption becomes a tool of the trade. Everyone along the manufacturing, distribution and drug enforcement infrastructures are plied with money. In addition, those active in the trade are well armed and violent. Entire nations are now essentially run by drug cartels. To what extent good politicians, investigators, and public servants are compromised from acting in our behalf, on non-drug-related policy, is an unknown, but assuredly goes on. Yet drug-related corruption among these folks, we depend on to carry out our will, are rarely exposed.
The point is that drug treatment programs need to be available when a user decides to clean up. That’s rarely something an individual can do alone. But in reality, we have tacitly accepted illegal drugs as a part of our society and all the unseen distortions that go with it. True, a portion of our law enforcement toil daily to curtail the drug trade. There are some moves to legalize drugs like weed and reduce jail sentences for low-level drug dealing. Again, a drop in the bucket of grief and money we are contending with. The question needs to be asked if our national drug habit and the drug economy has gotten too big and all pervasive to root out? Has it created a useful alternate economy that fills in for the failings of our legitimate job market? Are too many people in high places making too much money, to kill the cash cow? It goes to the basic question of who does our nation serve? The people? Or money? That brings us to a question about ourselves. What are we willing to do about it?
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On Jamie, and the Drug Economy:
Over the last few years, I’ve witnessed several family members Pass from overdose’s of Fentanyl, youngest 17 years of age with his Father, oldest 43 years of age, the easy accessibility to these drugs on the street has created its own pandemic, yes the pharmaceutical has there part and as well the Doctors that continue to write the script without proper follow up. Pandora’s Box was opened up back during Nixon, Reagan,Bush and Oillie North, manufactured,mass produced, and Distributed Drug to Central America for arms for the Iranians , which actually created the drug cartel, and destroyed many lives. Sorry for being so wordy but many lives have been lost, it’s time to correct this wrong.