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DEA FUELS MORAL PANIC OVER ADHD MEDS TO JUSTIFY ITS FAILED DRUG WAR

Mark Frauenfelder
2:28 pm Fri, Apr 19, 2024

joel bubble ben/shutterstock.com

THE DEA'S SCARE TACTICS LIKENING ADDERALL PRESCRIPTIONS TO THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC
BETRAYS ITS ADDICTION TO MANUFACTURING DRUG PANICS TO PROTECT ITS AUTHORITY AMID
THE DRUG WAR'S FAILURES.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has found a new bogeyman to justify its
failed prohibitionist crusade — prescription medication for people with ADHD. In
a doomsday rant reeking of hypocrisy and disinformation, a DEA official likened
rising Adderall prescriptions to the beginnings of the opioid epidemic.



Matthew Strait, a DEA deputy, claims stimulant prescriptions are skyrocketing
due to shady online marketplaces and telehealth providers exploiting the "mental
health crisis." He draws parallels to overprescription of opioids, saying "we're
at the precipice of our next drug crisis."



However, as Bloomberg reports, "People who legitimately need prescription
stimulants generally don't get addicted to them, said David Goodman, a
psychiatrist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine. And if they stop using a prescription stimulant, they don't go through
withdrawal in the same way they would after stopping an opioid, he said."



The DEA's hand-wringing over Adderall exemplifies its counterproductive approach
to mitigating the harms of drug abuse. For over 50 years it has enabled and
encouraged illicit drug markets to thrive in the first place. Prohibition
enriches violent cartels by incentivizing concentrated drugs like fentanyl that
are easier to smuggle. As one former DEA agent admitted, "The drug war is a
game" the DEA cannot win and doesn't want to win. DEA agents are reckless
cowboys who cozy up to drug cartels and become indistinguishable from the drug
kingpins they pretend to oppose. From Salon:

> Victory [in the war on drugs] would also mean less opportunity for the DEA to
> skim off millions of dollars via drug money laundering schemes, such as in
> 2015, when a Justice Department report revealed that DEA agents were
> attending lavish sex parties funded by Colombian drug cartels. José Irizarry,
> a disgraced former DEA agent now serving a 12-year federal prison sentence
> after confessing to involvement in the scheme, told the Associated Press (AP)
> last year that DEA agents are well aware they cannot make a dent in the drug
> trade.
> 
> "The drug war is a game," Irizarry told the AP. "It was a very fun game that
> we were playing."

Rather than policing victimless crimes, the federal government should focus on
harm reduction — treating addiction as a health issue, not criminalizing it. But
that would undermine the DEA's authority and budget. So they resort to
fearmongering and scapegoating prescription stimulants while ignoring their own
role in perpetuating drug crises.

And let's not forget that the War on Drugs started because Nixon hated Black
people and Vietnam war protestors. Here's what John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the
President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon, said about the
reasons for the establishment of the DEA:

> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two
> enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We
> knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by
> getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with
> heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
> communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their
> meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
> 
> "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did," he concluded,
> according to Baum.

Matthew Strait's dire Adderall warnings are just the DEA's latest self-serving
propaganda to protect their bureaucratic fiefdom — at society's expense.

Previously: The DEA seized an innocent man`s life savings without charging him
with a crime


/ COMMENTS


ADDERALL / ADDICTION / ADHD / DEA / DRUG POLICY / HARM REDUCTION / MATTHEW
STRAIT / MORAL PANIC / NEWS / PRESCRIPTION STIMULANTS / WAR ON DRUGS



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