Fentanyl Death Solutions

I believe, as do many, that experimentation with, use of, or addiction to illicit drugs does not warrant a random death penalty.

We already know from many illicit drugs including methamphetamine, heroin, and more that civilians will obtain them and use them, even knowing the danger they present including addiction and death. We also know from repeated attempts at prohibition that this strategy simply never worked and promises to never work. Punishment or threat of punishment, death, risk of death, and other prohibition-related inhibiters have never and never will solve the problem. Even the enforcers, the law enforcement officers and agencies, become corrupted and grow to be part of the problem because of the huge profits offered.

So, what next? First, although counter-intuitive, Fentanyl must be legalized. The dangerous drug must be, to start, consistent. The dose cannot be amateur random.  Just as when one takes an aspirin, the person should know they are taking merely one aspirin, and not a deadly dose which appears identical.  “Big Pharm” is for better of worse, expert at this very type of lab work. Sensitive laboratory work should be done in proper labs by properly trained lab technicians.

The government becomes responsible for consistent dosage manufacturing. An additional benefit to government sourcing these scourges is that crime is taken off the streets, like moving backroom betting to OTB, organized crime becomes monitored government enterprise. The criminal incentive is ideally reduced and eliminated. The random death penalty is dramatically reduced. Fentanyl is still highly “opium addictive.” So are many things from common pain-killer opioid pharmaceuticals to nose sprays to caffeine are still addictive. Some, like ethyl alcohol, are highly addictive, quite dangerous to the society and to the individual, and also legal and government controlled. Consider the alcohol industry during prohibition during the early 1900s, which funded the creation of the Mafia in large part. That lead to greater business in prostitution, gambling, other drugs, turf wars, street violence, LEO payoffs and other corruption, and more. , failed. Prohibition simply is a failed strategy which will never succeed. Time to stop wasting that time.

Turf war violence becomes unnecessary, since the turf being illegally used in our cities will lose its value. It is real estate after all, and only location counts. If the location loses its value because one can stop in the store and buy the product without risking street transactions with drug dealers selling unknown materials, possibly armed with concealed weapons, and harboring a variety of intents from killing and robbing their erstwhile customers to simply illegal drug sales of an unknown chemical. Take away the value of the location, which is only artificial to begin with. Take drug dealers off the street corners and the safety of our children in that neighborhood instantly increases.

While my focus is on Fentanyl, my analysis applies to the rest of the dangerous and less dangerous illicit street drugs. Heroin for example fits the same model and the same solution. As advocated for decades by LEAP (Law Enforcement Action Partnership, formerly known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/ the best apparent solution to the overall issue is legalization, regulation, and taxation. Even the truly dangerous street drugs are less dangerous by literally making them less dangerous, they are less dangerous by removing organized crime incentive, street dealing, and the rest. Only the governments can compete with and defeat the organized crime business model. We must stop killing our civilians and we must eliminate the very successful government-supported illicit drug industry to tackle this problem. Judges should be doing sentencing, not random death penalties, dangerous drugs should be sold in government-regulated stores, and then and only then can we address the education needed to discourage the use of these dangerous deadly drugs by our adult and younger civilians. We must remove the incentive for youngsters to take the money path of selling drugs illegally. We must stop playing at solutions and tackle actual solutions or we will lose to the drugs and to the criminals. We simply have no better choice. If legalization, regulation, and taxation is the best choice, why avoid it? The simplest answer is frequently the correct answer, as suggested by Occom’s Razor. We must be practical and no longer emotional in solving this horrid problem. This is a practical problem, not a political or emotional problem. Let’s solve it and save innocents. Let’s solve it and hit cartels, other organized crime, and amateur drug sales people where it hurts: in their wallets!

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/COBOULDER/bulletins/354ce93 is an excellent safety summary from Boulder County, Colorado. Read it!

Love, Lenny