Sam Quinones, author of “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth,' on the horrific rise in overdose deaths
The drug crisis that has gripped the U.S. for years hit a milestone during the pandemic. More than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses in the one-year period leading up to April, an almost 30% jump from the prior year, according to data released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics. That startling figure exceeds the number of traffic and gun fatalities combined.
These overdose figures are unprecedented because the situation on the street is as well. Never in the modern history of drug use — so around World War II, let’s say — have you seen a need for the drug-trafficking world to mix drugs to make a profit. Not with crack, PCP, cocaine — this all comes ready to sell, right? Now, in order for the trafficking world to make the lottery-winning type of profits it expects to make, it has to mix that stuff.
Let me ask you about that, because, when it comes to something so addicting, I often wonder about the cyclical relationship between supply and demand. As people get hooked, it seems like the synthetic nature of these products mitigates the barriers to mass-production. That quantity is due to the fact that it’s now the Mexican trafficking world making it, with those unlimited chemicals from ports on the Pacific coast of Mexico, andamong the millions of cars and trucks that cross back and forth to the United States every year. The shift was away from China to Mexico, where the chemicals are coming in in huge numbers.
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