It’s no secret that I think the opioid crisis is an excuse to grow the bureaucratic state. With frequent references to the work of Theodore Dalrymple, I’ve tried to warn legislators and citizens that budgets will be blown in the name of ‘doing something‘ to create a sprawling government infrastructure whose addiction to your tax dollars will prove a greater burden than the “problem” it was created to alleviate.
Every problem in contemporary society calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy. The ostensible purpose of this bureaucracy is to solve that problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct and so no more wishes the problem to dissapear than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself with no food for the future. In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy.”
The bureaucracy always develops a survival instinct, as do politicians who become reluctant to amputate a piece of their own government and hand it back to either state or local government, regardless of the good it will do. Something that may not even be possible in the context of this latest skirmish.
One with a decidedly federal degree of oversight from “leaders” with a history of setting traps that spring statist solutions into being.
Barack Obama and the Democrats allowed US guns to be walked into Mexico so they could be found at crime scenes as a catalyst to impose sweeping anti-gun legislation. So, how far fetched is it that the idea of drug or gang violence, precipitated by an open-borders policy wasn’t considered as a way to (not just court potential voters) but to institute a broader national police state?
Black Lives Matters were coddled by progressives in a similar pursuit, creating opportunities for Federal oversight of local law enforcement. A path to federal control of municipal policing. A journey that was well underway before regular Amerian voters rose from-sleepy disinterest to meddle in the anointing of Queen Hillary in the 2016 elections.
Mr. Trump has sworn to secure the sovereignty of the state and declared war on MS-13 but he must first win a bigger battle against the ruling class, and it’s Republican defenders in Congress. An issue that might become easier to manage if they can be made to realize that the opioid epidemic comes part and parcel with the DACA debate.
Daniel Horowitz, writing at Conservative Review, exposes a timeline of events linking Democrat open-borders policy, Obama’s DACA rules, and the resurrection of MS-13 to the spike in drug trafficking and addiction, with a nice aside showing how expanded Medicaid makes matters worse.
Let’s just say that the illegals who streamed over the border in the summer of 2014 with the promise of DACA amnesty were not only harmless children — not by a long shot. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies found that the resurgence in MS-13 gang violence, especially in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, and Long Island, New York, are the result of the 300,000 Central Americans who have been illegally resettled in our communities since DACA, as well as the growth of sanctuary cities.
And then there are the drugs.
Overdoses on opioids are the ultimate crisis facing America. In 2016, well over 20,000 died from fentanyl and related synthetic drug overdoses and over 15,000 died from heroin overdoses. Not surprisingly, the 540 percent increase in deaths began the year after Obama enacted DACA, abolished the 287(g) program, and essentially suspended immigration enforcement. Obama began suspending federal enforcement with the “Morton Memos” in the spring of 2011 and terminated 287(g) while implementing amnesty in June 2012.
A problem with a single majority source.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 80 percent of the illicit opioids sold in this country are from drug cartels based in Mexico and Central America. Heroin is almost exclusively a problem emanating from Mexico, drug cartels, and illegal alien smugglers. Given that the transnational drug cartels, illegal alien smugglers, and gang street traffickers are the main perpetrators of this crisis, immigration enforcement agencies are the best equipped to deal with the problem.
And as hinted at earlier,
There are two components to the opioid crisis: the prescription drugs and the illicit drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl. As we’ve noted before, the recent growth in the prescription drug overdose crisis is largely fueled by the Medicaid expansion, yet neither party wishes to “do something” about it. But the greater crisis is on the non-prescription side, which accounted for 78 percent of the 64,000 deaths in 2016, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Worse than the numbers is the trend line from fentanyl and heroin alone, which occurred right after Obama suspended immigration enforcement.
Medicaid expansion is itself a bureaucracy created to solve a problem. The problem being the need for the ruling class to expand the state into a more significant portion of the population’s daily lives at ever increasing expense to the productivity of others.
Obamacare created Medicaid expansion.
So the motivations of career Statists on these issues are ripe for consideration. Politicians are nothing without money and influence, and what better opportunity to impose their will at your expense than a rising body count and the voices of desperate family members demanding action?
If history is any guide an expansion of the state to deal with drugs and addiction will accomplish nothing meaningful on any timeline. “In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy.”
The answer is not to create new bureaucrats but to allow the Federal government to do something for which it is already responsible. National security.
Horowitz provides a list of actions to address the root of these problems here, which in this context makes perfect sense. He also adds that it is doubtful Republicans have the stomach for it.
I tend to agree.
There is very little evidence they have the will to fix a problem when they can appear to do something to the benefit of the ruling class and the monster government that protects their incumbency.
And the media will continue to use literate, English speaking “Dreamers” to sell open-borders to bleeding hearts. But what about the children of US citizens who are orphaned by crime and addiction created by open borders policy? What about the families of Americans destroyed by drugs or whose loved ones are murdered by illegals?
Republicans have a counter-narrative. They need to rise up 24/7/365 in defense of the people of the nation in support of ending policies at the root of the problem. A problem that doesn’t even begin to go away until we enforce immigration law, end sanctuary cities, and stop the flow of drugs into the country.
