From Truthout:
In a speech on March 19, billed as Trump's unveiling of a plan to confront the opioid crisis, the president reiterated in his clearest language yet that he wanted at least some drug dealers put to death. Though the speech was initially about the opioid crisis, Trump seamlessly transitioned into familiar anti-immigrant rhetoric, blaming people entering the country for the exponential growth of the overdose crisis.
Trump was portraying his enemies -- both domestic and foreign -- as carriers of disease and addiction, a dangerous path to walk down when coupled with state-sanctioned murder. Last May, Trump spoke on the phone with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, celebrating the dictator's "unbelievable job on the drug problem," which has included extrajudicial killings at the hands of the police.
Unsurprisingly, Trump's nativist claims about the cause of the opioid crisis are wildly incorrect. The crisis hasn't been driven by undocumented immigrants. What it has been fueled by -- at least in part -- is decades of pharmaceutical companies pumping pain pills into distributor warehouses and doctors' offices in an eco-system that benefited private drug companies at the expense of public health. Subsequent crackdowns on prescription pills drove up prices, increased scarcity and pushed untold numbers of people from illicitly procured -- but still regulated -- pills to the unregulated heroin market. The rise of fentanyl in that market has been particularly deadly. Racist and classist criminalization practices have exacerbated the crisis, making people struggling with opioid misuse problems less likely to seek help. Continue reading
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