Heroin Replaces Pills, and the 'War' Goes On
For Throwback Wednesday, government's greatest folly
I’m so old, I remember when “conservatives” were all about personal responsibility.
That’s why I chuckle when I hear the GOP’s Drug Warriors denounce China and Mexico for the fentanyl crisis. Yep, the CCP and the cartels are entirely to blame. Demand? Pish tosh. Not a single American chooses to take fentanyl.
Sigh. Anyway, about nine years ago, before The F Word became the right’s favorite threat-from-abroad boogie monster, I wrote the column below. Enjoy!
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They were ferociously disciplined, in mind and body. But they couldn’t conquer heroin.
Jeffrey Reynolds and Mark Kennedy, former Navy SEALs, worked security for the Maersk Alabama. In February, in Seychelles, both died from lethal cocktails of heroin and alcohol.
Back in their home country, smack is enjoying an unnerving revival. Two weeks before Reynolds and Kennedy died, acclaimed character actor Philip Seymour Hoffman fatally overdosed on a combination of narcotics that included heroin. Since then:
• The New York Times reported that the “amount of heroin seized by the Police Department on Staten Island has jumped more than 300 percent from 2011 to 2013, and this year shows no sign of abating.” (In its coverage of Hoffman’s death, the Times wrote that Gotham was “awash in cheap heroin.”)
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