Eliminating North America’s drug addiction crisis will not be fast, cheap, or easy. It would also create a political firestorm. That is why no serious attempt has been made to do so.
To be fair, the homeless, drug addiction and mentally ill disasters seemed to be manageable until the 1990’s when the introduction of oxycodone, crystal meth, and then fentanyl, changed everything.
A plan to eliminate drug addictions would fly in the face of the activists’ belief in human rights, demands to defund the police, the notion of body autonomy, the insistence of meeting addicts where they’re at (and leaving them there), and the conviction that there must be no forced treatments.
Not everyone thinks that drug addictions are a problem that needs solving. A few weeks ago, I met a young woman who works as social worker. She told me that she is okay with people using drugs. When her daughter turns 12, she will not be opposed to her daughter using cocaine as long as she uses safely.
It will take very a strong right or left wing federal government to take the tough measures required to eliminate our drug addiction crisis.
Presently, many municipal, provincial, state governments and our two federal governments, along with much of the drug social services and the medical industries are making it easier for junkies to remain addicted and for more people, including teenagers, to join in on the madness.
Below, I describe how three different types of government created drastic anti-drug programs that did work. One was a republic under an authoritarian military dictatorship, another was fascist, and the third communist.
Nationalist China
Staring in the 1800’s Imperial China tried to control opium addictions in China. Their efforts resulted in two disastrous wars with Great Britain. (The Opium Wars.)
Up until the 1860’s most opium in China was imported by the East India Company. China started growing its own opium and by the end of the century, it grew about 80% of the world’s supply. Most of that opium was consumed domestically.
Chiang Kai‐shek leader of the Republic of China and the Generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army.
After gaining power over much of China, the Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Nationalist Party of China, made another attempt to eliminate opium and other drug addictions. In 1929, the KMT launched a Six-Year Opium Suppression Plan. Trafficking in illegal drugs was criminalized and drug addicts received treatment.
Reformation rather than punishment was stressed. Treatment was free. The detoxification centres goal was to convert addicts into model citizens. Vocational training included machine operators, weaving, paper making, mining, and milling. The centres would transform opium addicts into a skilled workforce. Work was compulsory.
After leaving the centres, the ex-addicts were given regular medical checks. A relapse resulted in the person’s immediate return to a detoxification centre. Habitual users who relapsed after treatment were imprisoned. Some were executed.
Plan was unsuccessful
One reason, the Opium Suppression Plan failed was because the KMT could not stop the supply of opium coming in from areas of China that it did not control.
Warlords governed large areas of China and the Japanese controlled Manchuria. There was a lot of money to be made trafficking opium. Mitsubishi and Mitsui were involved in the opium trade during the Japanese occupation of China.
The money earned from selling opium was important to the Chinese Communist Party that was based in northern China. Chairman Mao would not allow opium smoking in areas that he controlled but he didn’t mind using opium to undermind Chiang Kai‐shek’s government. (Opium was known as white gold.)
Chairman Mao dealt with China’s drug addiction problems, some of which he was responsible for, later when he gained full power in the 1950s.
Nazi Germany 1933
After the crushing defeat in the First World War, many citizens of the German democracy in the 1920’s fled into world of drug addiction rather than cope with the depressing reality. Berlin was known as the “Whore of Babylon”.
The lyrics of a popular song at the time started with:
Once not so very long ago
Sweet alcohol, that beast,
Brought warmth and sweetness to our lives,
But then the price increased.
And so cocaine and morphine
Berliners now select.
Let lightning flashes rage outside
We snort and we inject…
In 1928 alone, 160 pounds of morphine and heroin were sold in Berlin by prescription. Those who could afford it took cocaine.
These wild and crazy days were denounced by the communists, the conservatives and the Nazis. If any of them got into power, the drug-fueled partying would be over.
After gaining power in 1933, Hitler’s government initiated a war on drugs. Starting in November 1933, addicts were sent to closed institutions for up to two years; longer if it was deemed necessary. Doctors who used drugs lost their licences for up to five years.
Doctors had to file a drug report whenever a patient was prescribed narcotics for longer than three weeks. All Germans were required to snitch on drug-addicted friends, acquaintances and family.
Drug users went through withdrawal cold turkey. It wasn’t long before addicts and dealers were sent to concentration camps.
These brutal measures were very effective in quickly reducing the number of cocaine and heroin addicts in Germany.
Peoples Republic of China
On 01 October 1949, Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The communist armies defeated the Nationalists in battle after battle and advanced across the mainland. Chiang Kai‐shek’s tattered forces fled to Taiwan.
The communist revolution eliminated drug addictions in mainland China. During the civil war, when the communists entered the cities, drug addicts and alcoholics—among other unproductive “parasites”—were rounded up and placed into rehabilitation and education centres.
Millions of addicts were forced into compulsory treatment where addicts received medical help and rehabilitation. They were given counseling and job training. Then they were assigned to a workplace and provided housing. Those who were resistant to change were sent to labour camps or were imprisoned. Drug dealers were executed. Opium-producing regions were planted with new crops
Within two years, drug additions in China were almost totally eliminated.
The Golden Triangle
Production of opium shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle. The remnant opium trade primarily served Southeast Asia, but it then spread to supplying American soldiers during the Vietnam War and it still provdes the world markets with heroin.
Lessons for North America
Because of our democratic form of government, and a lack of consensus, we can’t take these drastic actions that are required to stamp out drug addictions.
For now what we should focus on is to:
• build both public & affordable housing on a huge scale.
• stamp out the open-air drug markets.
• stop the open-use of hard drugs.
• severe jail sentences for drug dealers.
• bring back the mental hospitals.
• greatly improve services for youth leaving foster care.
• spend a lot more money on drug treatment services.
• compel treatment for drug addictions and serious mental illnesses.
• give First Nation communities more power and responsibilities.
• bring back manufactoring jobs and reintroduce tariffs.
Sources
Narcotic Culture A History of Drugs in China
Frank Dikotter, Lars Laamann, Zhou Xun
The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0-226-14905-6
Blitzed Drugs in the Third Reich
Norman Ohler
First Mariner Books edition 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-91534-4
Mao The Unknown Story
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday
Alfred A. Knopf New York
ISBN: 0-679-42271-4