I Woke Up, I Found Her, That’s All I Know
Programmed response to Heroin overdose in AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad’ as allegory for western drug policy.
(We) Woke Up
The programmed response from Jesse to the coroners officials who respond to Jane’s overdose in Season 2 of Breaking Bad in large part mimics the state of political and public discourse on heroin use nationwide. Across the globe, we are waking up and increasingly accepting the notion that the current rise in heroin-related deaths represents a “crisis”.
But is it?
We Found (Him)
Recent celebrity deaths have again focused the issue on a Heroin epidemic that is plaguing our communities. Further, these public figures’ tragic downfalls perhaps have altered the symbolic public image of “who” can be an addict. It appears we have reached the proverbial “Tipping Point”.
We mustn’t ask ourselves whether the drugs are destructive. This is undebatable. Instead we must ask our leaders if a “War on Drugs” would be better suited as a “War on Addiction”.
The Western approach to drug abuse for the 20th century through today could be be explained as a philosophy of, “Kill the body and the head will die.”(1) By attempting to eradicate the drugs entirely, policy indicated a belief that by starving the supply the problem could me eradicated. Yet little was, nor can be done to quell the demand imposed by addiction. Addicts find little more than minor inconvenience in search out “substitute addictions”. Looking globally, this is perhaps most disturbingly seen in Russia with the use of the drug Krokodil.
From wikipedia:
“Abuse of homemade desomorphine was first reported in Siberia in 2003 when Russia started a major crackdown on heroin production and trafficking, but has since spread throughout Russia and the neighboring former Soviet republics”
…abuse in Russia attracted international attention in 2010 due to an increase in clandestine production, presumably due to its relatively simple synthesis from codeine available over-the-counter.
The impurity of homemade krokodil has become notorious for producing severe tissue damage, phlebitis and gangrene, sometimes requiring limb amputation in long-term users.
Heroin is our krokodil. A similar, more dangerous alternative to the product pushed out of the market. Look again at the charts from earlier in the article. While at first glance these appear to simply show an increase in the number of Heroin users, the figures themselves do not exist in a vacuum. In fact, figures are inversely correlated to previous “successful” efforts of targeted drug eradication. Most notably to these figures, a late 90's “war on Oxycontin”.
A crackdown on doctors to limit the amount of available prescriptions first limited the supply of available Oxycontin. Later, lawsuits and governmental pressures led to a formulaic conversion whose active psychoactive ingredients were destroyed in the process of preparing “OC” for intravenous abuse.
The drop in deaths stemming from Oxycontin abuse have dropped significantly and this is touted as a victory in the “war on drugs”
Yet, this have been followed by an increase in Heroin usage that now exceeds pre-oxycontin levels, as well as an unprecedented casualty rate. Furthermore, studies have unilaterally shown that attempts at Police intervention in the heroin trade have had no effect on the price or supply of the drug itself.
“It may be argued that seizing large quantities of heroin being imported into the country should decrease its supply and hence increase its price, resulting in a reduction in the quantity of the drug being purchased or consumed…It was found that heroin seizures had no effect on the price, purity or perceived availability of heroin at street level, it was further found that admissions to methadone treatment were not affected by the price or perceived availability of heroin or by local arrests for heroin use/possession, nor was any relationship found between these arrests and the price of street-level heroin.”
That’s All (We) Know
The stray dog in this fight, the disadvantaged; are the users—with little to no public engagement on the issues that plague them. This is simply about putting up a fight for many who have given up their own.
As the olympics start this week, let us root for the underdog. The forgotten. The woman in an abandoned building within earshot of the stage—her body withering away from a drug she created. From a drug we created.
Vancouver seemed to take the opposite approach to it’s otherwise highly visible drug problem during the 2010 games. Rather than capturing the moment to use as a megaphone to discuss the problem and the city’s progressive solutions, addicts who resided in the Downtown Eastside were instead hidden from the camera lens far from sight.
Hiding the problem from the world around you. Suffering in silence. Ignoring the presence of a downfall until the imminent crash is to too loud to mute.
If these are the symptoms of addicts, perhaps we too are one.
Addicted to the idea that strength alone can will the problem away. Faith that the strength of our police, military, doctors, and politicians can in fact “win” the war on drugs. This inevitability has been hidden from the public discourse for too long as the ‘solutions’ are all taboo.
Harm reduction policies have proven effective in many cases. This includes needle exchange programs, distribution of the counteractive drug Naloxone (often effective in reversing Heroin overdose), to supervised injection sites. We have made significant “progress”, yet the number of casualties has never been higher.
Heroin Maintenance programs were first attempted in the UK in the 1920's and were a casualty of the US “War on Drugs”. The Swiss government has had the longest running such program from 1995 through today, it’s results found:
Heroin addicts for whom other treatment approaches had failed, can be recruited and retained in HAT. Their health status and social integration can be significantly improved. Improvements are mainly stable, also in discharged patients. Side effects of prescribed diamorphine are comparatively few and manageable. No fatal overdose of prescribed substances occurred up to now.
Policy needs to shift rather than the simply changing the name of the villain.
Current drug policy in the western world is a failed hostage situation; the police and dealers exchanged in a standoff with only a single guaranteed outcome; the death of the hostage.
That’s all we know.
