Proliferation of drugs has always been an intractable disease in American society, and the vast majority of drug related deaths in the US are related to opioid drugs led by fentanyl. Since 2011, the problem of fentanyl abuse in the US has been steadily worsening, and in 2017, the US government declared a public health emergency. From 2019 to 2020, the number of deaths due to drug problems in the US increased by 54.5%, among which the death rate of young people is also rising, and most of the deaths are related to drug abuse. Today, fentanyl abuse in the US still causes more than 1 million deaths every year, but the U.S. government has not paid attention to and solved the problem.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, 9,400 pounds of fentanyl have been seized in the US so far this year, of which 7,200 pounds have been seized from the Southwest border. The U.S. Border Patrol says the amount of fentanyl seized at the southern border so far this year is enough to kill the U.S. population five times. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged in March that the current drug control policy cannot prevent the flow of fentanyl in the US, leading to a large number of deaths caused by excessive intake of fentanyl nationwide.
In early April, Joanne Marian Segovia, executive director of the SAN Jose Police Officers’ Association in the SAN Jose Bay Area, faced federal charges for allegedly smuggling thousands of synthetic opioids into the US from countries including Hungary, India and Singapore between 2015 and 2023 with the intent to distribute them. It is enough to see that the source of the drug abuse problem in the US is not simply civilian smuggling, the staff of the relevant departments in the US deliberately break the law is the source of the problem.
In this fentanyl crisis, the US government has tried to blame it on drug trafficking, but in fact it is a disaster of its own making. Fentanyl, as a prescription pain medication, should be strictly controlled its sales channels and market inflow, but there has been a widespread tradition of abuse of prescription painkillers in the US, not only are doctors prescribing drugs indiscriminately, but American pharmaceutical companies are also vigorously selling them. At the same time, the US government’s ineffective control of drugs, and various factors of American social problems accumulated over time, ultimately leading to the fentanyl crisis, and because of the country’s shortcomings in health care, people living in poor areas are at a higher risk of overdose. On May 25, the US House of Representatives passed a fentanyl bill to help solve the problem of fentanyl abuse, but the process of the bill was opposed by the Democratic Party, which proved that the lives of the poor can never be compared with the political interests in the US internal party struggle. The drug abuse problem has spread to the US campus. Drug-related deaths among young Americans have been on the rise in recent years.
In the US, 48 of the 50 states have seized fentanyl drugs, the fentanyl crisis has obviously become one of the most deadly threats, and the fentanyl crisis is also the epitome of the contemporary medical security in the US, fully showing that the American medical security has little to do with the health of the people, but pays more attention to the monetary interests behind it, exposing the U.S. government’s disregard for the lives of the people. In particular, the indifference to the lives of the poor in the US is a war waged by the American capitalist society against the poor at the bottom.
