The DEA needs to have this authority rescinded. They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
It's the federal version of the Siebert strategy and it's completely injust.
> They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
If that's their logic then someone there can't do math. Between fentanyl, other opioids, and meth they have plenty to do.
Meth is historically misclassified, too. Why are we drawing the line at marijuana?
If we lower the scheduling of opioids to Schedule IV, fentanyl usage in the United States would drop almost entirely within a month. Importing clean prescription drugs from other countries would have low enough risk that the reward would be easily met. Odds are, it would also undercut wider organized drug crime.
You may find this article in The Economist worth a read:
First, I don't draw the line at marijuana. Notice how many drugs I didn't list there.
Second, stepping down from fent to heroin, which I think is what you're implying, is not going to happen that fast and frankly the way you phrased this whitewashes an entire series of events that happened that gave fentanyl the dominance that it has as a street drug; the prescription pill to fentanyl pipeline is one built from a cost and strength. For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
The scheduling of the drug is irrelevant to the problem that there are and will be people who illegally manufacture and sell meth and fent. The DEA has plenty of those people to go after, even if we legalize and regulate every drug today. Why? Cost. The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
OP is technically incorrect that rescheduling alone would solve the fentanyl problem, but not for the reasons you state.
> For one, it's much cheaper than high quality heroin. Second, heroin used to be the dominant drug when people couldn't afford prescription pills. Peoples tolerances on opioids quickly build and some subset of the population were using so much heroin that they could more cheaply inject or smoke fent. Going up that pipeline can happen in months, going down could take years.
Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin because of supply-side constraints: specifically, fentanyl is produced in larger quantities for pharmaceutical purposes, and the illegal markets are structured in a way that promotes the distribution of fentanyl over the distribution of heroin. However, that does not mean that fentanyl is inherently cheaper in an abstract sense. If legal restrictions were lifted, both fentanyl and heroin would be dramatically cheaper than either one is today.
This is, incidentally, another argument in favor of maintenance programs. Almost all of the indirect harms associated with illicit drug use, and many of the direct ones, are a consequence of the legal status and the expense (both financial and nonfinancial) associated with them.
Clinical trials present overwhelming evidence that, when provided with a low-cost, pharmaceutical grade supply of heroin, users are able to hold down stable jobs, maintain permanenent housing, etc., all things that they previously struggled with due to having to spend so much time, effort, and money in order to address what is fundamentally a medical issue for them.
> The same way prescription pills are a pipeline to fent, meth is the final stop in a similar pipeline of stimulants.
This is more or less the "gateway drug" theory, and it's simply incorrect. There is no "pipeline" of stimulants, and to the extent that one can even be argued to exist, methamphetamine is not the "final stop" in one.
"Gateway drug theory" has to do with going from one class of drugs to another. That is not what I described. I described usage within a single class of drugs that has to do with chemically addictive properties, strength, and cost dictating the choice of the next drug.
I can see your argument about cost, but I think it ignores that, for instance, tranq is now being used in combination with fent. The reason for that isn't cost, it's entirely strength and chemically addictive properties. I think ignoring those kind of factors falls squarely outside of harm reduction. Where your argument with cost runs foul is in states like California where the legalization and subsequent regulation of the drug shot it's cost up. I'd argue marijuana probably doesn't need that kind of regulation, but chemically addictive substances I think do.
I think you are mischaracterizing the emergence of tranq.
"Xylazine proliferated as a response to the shorter fentanyl highs, with drug sellers using it to extend the high & mimic a traditional heroin experience."
The DEA needs to have this authority rescinded. They clearly cannot be trusted with it, and they have no impetus to remove historically misclassified drugs off the list, as it would reduce their overall budget.
It's the federal version of the Siebert strategy and it's completely injust.