A drug epidemic is currently threatening the United States. Various drugs, in vast quantities, cross the border on a daily basis resulting in mass killings across the US. What causes heroin addiction? The question seems obvious, right? Heroin causes heroin addiction. Chemical ‘hooks’ in the drug makes your body crave viciously after it.
Today’s school’s theory on addiction is based on a series of experiments carried out earlier in the 20th century. The experimenters placed a rat in a cage with two accessible water bottles: one filled with pure water and the other containing water laced with morphine. As we can predict, the rat almost every time becomes desperate for the drugged water. The result of this experiment ends with the rat killing itself as a result of OD (overdose).
Later in the 1970s, Bruce Alexander, a Canadian psychologist, noticed something odd with this experiment. The rat is placed in a cage all alone. The rat has basically nothing else to do besides taking the drugged water. Bruce questioned what would happen if he tested it differently. For that reason, he manufactured ‘rat park’, which essentially is a small town for rats, where they can have lots of fun and plenty of friends. But here is the interesting thing: the rats hardly ever use the drugged water, nor do they ever overdose. There is no doubt that America has a crisis when it comes to overdoses with supplements such as heroin, but what if chemical hooks are not the main factor for addiction? This seems rather paradoxical when various articles and reasonable sources don’t correspond the same. Sources such as DrugAbuse.gov say that roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them. What Bruce Alexander wants people to acknowledge seems to be that we should look away from the statistical aspects of the situation, which many would find suspicious.
When the rat park was built, critics rose and argued that rats could not be comparable to humans. Fortunately, there was a human experiment on the exact same principle happening at the same time. It was called the Vietnam War. More than 20% of Americans were heavily using heroin to spend their time. What is strikingly accurate is the result. It turned out that 95% of the heroin users didn’t go to rehab, nor did they go into withdrawal. If you believe the old theory of addiction, this makes no sense, but if you believe Bruce Alexander´s theory, it makes perfect sense. The outcome of this test showed a different side to addiction. What if addiction isn’t about the chemical hooks, but if it is about your cage? This thought reflects well on the Vietnam War. Because if you are put in a place where you do not want to be, and you would be forced to either kill or be killed, doing heroin is a way to spend your time. In addition, if you go back to your home with your family and relatives, it’s comparable to being taken out of the previous cage and put into a human rat park. Humans have an immense need to bond and connect with each other. When we are pleased, we connect well with the people around us, but when we are hurt isolated, or simply beaten down by life, we will bond with something that will give us some sense of relief. What that may be, varies individually.
Since the 1950s, the average number of close friends in America has gradually declined. Technology and materials have drastically increased their importance in our lives. The likelihood of choosing items and floorspace instead of people has greatly improved. As a result of this, the number of people feeling lonely increases dramatically. Choosing floorspace over people comes with deep consequences. Anxiety and depression are just some of the consequences, and the feeling of loneliness doubled the chance of someone beginning with heroin or other opioids. America accounts for 4.4 percent of the world’s population but consumes roughly 80 percent of the global opioid supply, according to CNBC. How come? In the beginning, Mexican drug cartels increasingly overtook control over the drugs in America. In later years, various cartels across Latin America constructed countless routes where drug trafficking took place, which forced Richard Nixon to declare drug abuse ‘public enemy number one’. Over the course of forty years, American presidents have fought the war on drugs with hardline methods. This war campaign turned out to be a major failure. It led to the largest incarceration in the US, political destabilization, harsh violence, mass killings, and the over the American continent. The act against drugs constantly fuels drug cartels with billions of dollars while the US tries to achieve an unobtainable goal. America seeks to solve the opioid epidemic by eradicating all supply of drugs. The problem with this strategy is that it overlooks the fundamentals of market forces: supply and demand. By reducing the supply without decreasing the demand first, its value increases exponentially. The supply might decrease at some point, but drugs will always be available, and since drugs are not price-sensitive, drugs will be consumed no matter what they cost. The extreme impact of heroin and other opioids deprives people’s lives. Great numbers of opioid-addicted incarcerated behind American prison bars are released with several times higher likelihood of dying related to drugs or overdoes after two weeks.
As the opioid epidemic continues, America desperately seeks to win the war on drugs as the outcomes negatively grow. But the continuation of reducing the opioid supply seems to not help. Other countries’ solutions have been proven to work. A perfect example is Portugal; when drugs first arrived in Portugal and America, the two countries took diametrically opposite directions. America chose to spend billions of dollars incarcerating drug users and traffickers. Opposed to that strategy, Portugal sought to solve drug conflicts, but with a more humane approach. Portugal’s plan to reduce drug use was simply to decriminalize opioids of any sort, all from cocaine to heroin. In 1990, Portugal faced a heroin crisis. One in a hundred people were consuming drugs, which is equivalent to 1% of the country’s population. By the end of June 2001, Portugal decriminalized any drug sort, becoming the first country to decriminalize all drugs. Anyone found exploiting opioids was either warned or got fined, but not detained. Users were treated as patients, not as criminals. In addition to Portugal’s solution, Switzerland experienced a public health crisis related to heroin use in late 1970. Just as Portugal solved it, Switzerland used the harm reduction strategy. Where they opened free heroin maintenance centers, where addicts would be given free clean needles, beds, showers, and private injection rooms. Supervision staff made sure the patients were treated and stabilized, while economists and social workers helped to find a house and solve their other social and economic issues. This helped addicts focus more on recovering instead of financing their addiction. The harm reduction strategy besides offering addicts free heroin, helps them heal their wounds and recover back into the societal cycle.
Since the beginning of the war on drugs, considerable damage and misery affecting individuals, states, and countries have happened. Heroin as well as other opioids have replaced humans, and people are constantly choosing space over people, which increases people’s sense of loneliness. The chance of a lonely person starting with drugs has doubled. It's time to end the war on drugs and move on with something better. So how are we going to solve it? The opposite of addiction is connection, which is how we are going to solve it.