I really wish this was true, both disinterest and broad agreement. Cause honestly I don’t even have an agreement with myself what do about the opioid crisis.
Do we follow the path of Indonesia and Malaysia and routinely execute drug dealers? Or do we skip the formalities of a trial, and just kill them on the street like Duterte does in the Phillippines?
What about user do we adopt the approach of number European country and make sure they have access to clean needles and skip any kind of punishment? Or do we use a carrot and stick approach, stick with rehab or go to jail?
And how do we go about breaking the addictions, for decades we sent people to 12 step programs. They do work for many people, but generally only after multiple attempts. Or are there better programs?
Is marijuana part of the solution for pain treatment, or the legalization trend part of the normalization that is ok to be high in society and part of the problem? Should we use less dangerous opioid to treats opioid addiction? I can honestly say I don’t have a definite answer to any of these questions Although, it would take a mountain of evidence before I’d sanction Duterte style executions.
Disinterest.
Tom Petty died this week of a cardiac arrest at 66.
Tom was an amazing rocker and a heroin addict. I’m going to make a prediction that drugs were a primary or contributing factor in his early death.
I’ll also predict if I’m right what we WON’T see on Facebook or QT3 is a demand that Congress pass laws and do something to rid this country of this deadly product. There won’t be posting of cute meme comparing America drug problem to other countries. There won’t be calls for Americans who use drugs (including alcohol) in a responsible way to change their behavior.
(To be fair having a tried and failed for 50 years to win the war on drugs, I don’t know if I trust the Federal government to find a solution, but IMO the government at some level has to do something, which also should be part of the discussion.)
In short, we will see none of the outrage that mass shooting causes will happen because of yet another drug-related death.
I know this because none of these celebrities who died of OD, or this much longer list of famous people caused a demand for action.
I wish I had something other than mostly cynical reasons to explain the differences in reaction.
If any of you think you have answers to the questions I posed on drug policy please post them here, but I’m done debating gun laws (at least for a year :-) )