Endless War –

Feb. 28, 2018 – …Sessions unveiled a new task force that would target the epidemic. But Sessions’ new group, led by Mary Daly, a former US attorney who supervised narcotics units in Virginia and New York, is focused almost exclusively on law enforcement, and not on treatment or rehabilitation. Prosecuting opioid crimes, investigating opioid-related health care fraud, and increasing funding to state and local law enforcement are necessary measures, but, as we learned in the 1980s, we can’t arrest our way out of the drug war. With 174 Americans dying of an overdose each day, the opioid crisis seems terrifying, but it doesn’t have to be. The thing is, we’ve been here before. America experienced a major heroin epidemic over four decades ago, between 1967 and 1976. But when the federal government instituted large-scale reforms, including widespread support of methadone maintenance programs, rates of overdose deaths plunged. Studying the lessons of the past could help us battle the drug epidemic today, and it could keep our focus on where it matters most: on the substances that are needlessly killing thousands of Americans every year.
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