America’s Worst Addiction
In the past few years, it’s been difficult to find any topics that feature bipartisan agreement. So it has been a pretty big deal that leaders from both sides of the aisle — from law and order Republicans to liberal Democrats, from civil rights groups to the Koch brothers — managed to find common ground on an issue (even if the need for reform was as wildly obvious as it is in this case). “When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum.” But there were a few outliers. And one of those outliers is leading Jeff Sessions’ efforts to bring back the war on drugs. (Spoiler alert: Drugs win.) It will be worth taking note how this so-called war is fought on different fronts — from the inner cities where drug use will be further criminalized, to rural America where the opiate addicts will be treated as victims of a rabid epidemic driven by economic forces. America’s worst addiction is the war on drugs.