Americans themselves, not Mexican cartels, are to blame for America's long history of addiction to opiates

The Louisville Courier Journal recently printed an investigative story on how the tentacles of a relatively new and powerful Mexican drug cartel, CJNG, have reached small town Kentucky. Although the story admits that generally this cartel as others holds its operatives in the U.S.—who are not all necessarily “Mexicans,” but could be buyers and dealers who are “Asians, black guys, outlaw motorcycle gangs, white trash” says one DEA agent—to not bring attention upon themselves by engaging in the kind of violence that is common in Mexico, the authors can’t help but ring out the alarm bells at full throttle, engaging in anecdotes that ignore the larger questions. “They” are killing the “next generation” says the anguished parents of a son who overdosed on fentanyl the day before he was to go into rehab. Who are “they”? "They," of course, are the ones responsible for “The unending stream of narcotics has contributed to this country’s unprecedented addiction crisis, devastating families and killing more than 300,000 people since 2013.” The story doesn’t tell you straight out that most of those dead died as a result of Mexico’s “war on drugs,” although it alludes to the violence there a few times, but just throws out those big numbers because they both excite outrage and sells newspapers. That there might be a "cell" of a “violent cartel” in an “unsuspecting town” doesn’t mean their “violence” is here, save in incidental episodes of threats to keep a few operatives “in line.”

There are the usual complaints that Mexico is not doing enough, and there is certainly reason to blame a country with very real and persistent social and economic inequities (film director Guillermo del Toro looks more “Anglo” than Mexican, which may explain why he has never employed a Hispanic actor in any of his American-produced films), and its corruption through all levels of government is well known. Law officers tasked to stop the drug trade profess never to speak about their operations to anyone outside their own inner circle or DEA agents, due to the proliferation of cartel informants; one officer admitted "If you provide information to the Mexican government, it’s probably the last thing you would say." President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “plan” to stop violence in Mexico was to decriminalize all drugs in Mexico, but that will remain a useless gesture as long as the same drugs are criminalized in the U.S. AMLO has been criticized for concentrating federal troops on its southern border to control illegal immigration instead of using them to “control” the cartels; this is again a bit hypocritical, since Donald Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican goods unless it did “something” about controlling Central American migrants, and the only way Mexico could comply was to send troops to its southern border instead of fighting cartels—which has often produced more defeats than “victories.”  

But the biggest hypocrisy of all is the fact that the U.S. really has only itself to blame for its drug problem. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was not “invented” in Mexico, it was invented right here in the U.S., and because of its potency and effects similar to another opiate—heroin—it quickly became the subject of abuse. The Smithsonian Institute website has an interesting post concerning the history of opiate abuse in the U.S. dating from its founding. The opium poppy, which originated in Turkey and was “domesticated” specifically because of its “medicinal” properties, eventually traveled eastward to Afghanistan and to China and Southeast Asia for its production, and the “product” of course made its way to Europe and America. 

During the Revolutionary War, opium was used to treat wounded soldiers, and Benjamin Franklin used it to control pain from a bladder stone. But it was the American Civil War that set off America’s  epidemic of opiate abuse; the Union Army issued 10 million opium pills to soldiers, plus 2.8 million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. With the invention and use of the hypodermic needle, doctors really got carried away with administering opiates. In David Courtwright’s book Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, he notes that “Though it could cure little, it could relieve anything. Doctors and patients alike were tempted to overuse.” In the 19^th century, the opiate morphine was considered a “wonder drug.” Opium powders very much like today’s OxyContin led to the opiate addiction of one-in-200 Americans by 1900. Doctors even self-medicated themselves; there is a scene in Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun where Maria’s doctor, after giving her a health clearance, conceals himself as he shakily gives himself an injection of an opiate, implying that he is a drug addict. 

By the late 19^th century women were 60 percent of opiate addicts. Although the dangers of opiate addiction was recognized, doctors often ignored warnings because patients demanded that their pains be relieved and there were few alternative methods. Because at the time the majority of opiate addicts were women, it was deemed a “scandal” but not a crime to be an addict. Courtwright points out that only when the majority of addicts were males and its use done more openly did addicts receive less sympathy from the public and addiction became a “crime.” 

The U.S. occupation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War set-up a major pipeline to transport opium from Asia. A law “regulating” trade in opium passed in 1909, but it did not stop its use. Instead, it merely drove prices up for what was available. The street price of a “can” of opium went up 12 fold overnight. Drug dealing “gangs”—mostly white and some Asian—were the precursors of the drug gangs of today. But because these original “products” were usually not “high value,” users eventually gravitated to more powerful opiates, like heroin. 

Courtwright points out the similarities between opiate addiction then and that of today, but the differences are also quite apparent.  Today there are more “options” available to doctors and patients than a century ago, but drug companies are putting pressure on doctors to prescribe their new “wonder drugs,’ which are merely more sophisticated varieties of opiates, and opioids in particular. He notes that the reason why opioids have infected “small town” white America is that opioids are technically “legal” even when abused, and less subject to punitive action—the real reason why opioids are “threatening” Kentucky’s “kids.” Blaming Mexican drug cartels for the opioid problem in this country is merely hypocritical and self-serving.

According to the DEA website, the three main sources for illegal opium used to create opioids are Burma, Afghanistan, and Colombia—not Mexico, which supplies the “middlemen.” The DEA admits that it is difficult to control opiates in the U.S. because “Opium and heroin are ideal trade products–they are in great demand, are very profitable to produce, and the products take up little space. With modern transportation, opium and heroin can be moved from one country to another within days or a few weeks. Opium and heroin have a long and stable shelf life, allowing the products to be stored for long periods of time.” 

The “difficulty” in controlling opioids in the U.S. comes also from a schizophrenic history of “legalization” of opiates in the U.S.; at one time or another, opium, morphine, heroin and codeine were or are still “legal” for use in the U.S. Codeine, which is used in cough suppressants, can be “abused” by consuming large quantities of cough medicine, or consuming it “pure.” But the point is that the U.S. has a long history of opiate addiction, and it occurred long before there was a problem with Mexico. The “blame game” targeting Mexico is hypocrisy run rampant, since Mexico would not be stricken with the violence it is seeing now if there wasn’t a vast market for illegal drugs and virtually unregulated sale of guns in the U.S. that dates back since the very birth of this country. That is the part of the story that reports like that of the Courier Journal keep missing. Americans need to stop blaming other countries, and look at themselves squarely in the face.