(Initially posted in c/drugs but thought it would get more engagement here)
I was thinking about the way cannabis is increasingly legal in the US, and I’m starting to see it as a symptom of balkanization in this country that might start to become the model for the legalization of other drugs.
To explain: In most places in the US it is either legal or de facto legal despite the fact that until this year it was federally considered a schedule I controlled substance alongside Heroin, LSD, and many other widely known recreational drugs. For decades the federal government considered cannabis to be wholly unsuitable for all medical use and too dangerous for scientists to even research. They dedicated vast resources into destroying cannabis farms and putting cannabis users, dealers, and growers into prison. It was in a legal category more severe than fentanyl and many of its analogues.
Without even changing those laws, we got to a place where most states decided to just hand out licenses to businesses to grow and sell it, and allow anyone over the age of 21 to buy it.
I think the research chemical scene has by now made it clear that recreational drugs are not a finite group. New drugs are invented all the time. In the same way, new plants containing psychoactive compounds are either discovered or popularized all the time. They do not necessarily start their lives in the public consciousness with stigma, and they can be just as benign or deadly, euphoric or dysphoric, sedating or stimulating, psychedelic or inebriating as any classic, widely known drug.
The way the federal government categorized drugs and the way the DEA enforced drug law was never rational when you approach it from the goal of reducing the harm drugs cause socially. In actuality it was always about maintaining a legal and socially acceptable avenue for continuing this country’s legacy of racism and slavery.
What this means is that which new drugs are to be banned, which are to be ignored, and which are to be accepted is an entirely local matter determined by which marginalized communities can be connected to each drug for purpose of stigmatization. With increasing social disunity across the states, we might begin to see certain drugs became wide spread and tolerated in certain states but treated with extreme hostility elsewhere. A situation like this would paralyze the ability of the DEA to gain enough cooperation from local law enforcement to curtail production and distribution, leading to decrease in stigmatization and eventually the relaxation in attitudes even in places where the stigmatization began.
Unfortunately that has been their most recent approach to rebuilding support for their war on drugs after they utterly failed with cannabis.
I tend to take a sort of positive outlook here in the medium term, though. My thinking is that this kind of response to fentanyl is ultimately going to be their own undoing because there is no end to the number of potential high potency mu-agonist chemicals that can be invented, produced, and smuggled. Enforcement is incapable of solving this problem because they are high potency synthetic drugs that can be made anywhere. This is the reason why it’s still possible to buy LSD, and the DEA tried just as hard to get rid of LSD as it did cannabis. Except here, the drugs are actually addictive for most people, meaning there will always be motive for someone to produce and sell them.
The better they get at shutting down importers and labs, the better clandestine chemists get at producing higher potency mu-agonists. This will result in a feedback cycle where smugglers get better at smuggling these high potency drugs because they take up less physical space for the same number of doses. Once smuggled they only need dilution. Once the supply is diluted and in the US, it is impossible for cops to detect just like with LSD.
So the cops go out and maul users and dealers. This ruins lives, makes people hate cops more and more. The drugs continue killing people. So the police ruin even more lives. The drugs continue killing people. That’s a cycle that will never end without legalization of lower potency opioids, and eventually a state or even just a local municipality will figure this out, and those lower potency opioids will spread, and the places they spread to will see lower rates of opioid overdose.