Is it time to make heroin legal?
The heroin- opioid epidemic keeps getting worse and worse. This is a governmental problem that has been devastating wide swaths of the country. I have been studying the issue of drug dependency since I was a fairly young man and if you doubt that, you might go to the New York State Library and look up methadone treatment.
I wrote about that when I was working for State Sen. Manfred Ohrenstein on his New York State mental health committee at a time when the Democrats managed to grab the State Senate. Two prominent American doctors, Vincent Dole and his wife, Marie Nyswander, pioneered the practice of using methadone to treat heroin addiction. The treatment held numerous advantages. They claimed that methadone was easier to control than heroin. If people signed up to take the drug, it would be easier for them to get into treatment programs and for their medical providers to follow them. It turns out that some of those reasons proved out, but there were major pitfalls.
Some addicts actually sold their methadone after feigning taking it. One thing is for sure — methadone helped some people but it wasn’t a cure-all.
There are some experts who believe that the current heroin epidemic is a direct result of the over-prescription of opioid drugs. When those drugs proved to be too expensive and hard to get, addicts switched to heroin which was much cheaper. The problem is exacerbated by the number of people who sell the stuff — it’s almost impossible to prevent distribution. We learned during Prohibition that the only way to get the distribution of alcohol out of the hands of the underworld was to end Prohibition. There are good thinkers who believe that the only real way out of the heroin mess is to do the same thing. They theorize that if you make it legal to buy drugs, you can track the addicts, offer them help, and tax the hell out of the product.
The problem, of course, is that the American people really aren’t ready to go all the way. Some people, like for- mer Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel, have been calling for legalization for years. He should know. His community was among the worst hit. So much so that the whole anti-heroin effort has been tinged with racism and may be one of the leading reasons why so many people of color at the lower end of the economic spectrum resort to selling drugs to get drugs. One option might be to not prosecute those who use or sell small amounts of drugs. Countries like Portugal have gone the decriminalization route and many people say that it’s working.
It is hard to imagine that a Trump administration that caters to its so- called base would entertain the decriminalization-legalization argument. Of course, Trump won the Electoral College contest because of a hardcore base of folks who believe that they have been left behind and that they are either underemployed or unemployed with no hope. Think about that. Many of the same people who voted for Trump did so for the same reasons that people take heroin.
So there are many ways for America to take on the heroin scourge. One way is to make for a more equal and fair society. Another way is to legalize drugs. Yet another is to set up a rehabilitation industry. We already see many ads on television urging people to call to get cured.
President Trump has declared war on drugs. Good idea since we are in a terrible conundrum. Meanwhile, he is trying to cut down all the social programs that might make things better so he is crying crocodile tears.
No solution is perfect, but I believe that it may be time to try something as dramatic as legalization, with as many controls as possible. What we have now is untenable.