THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Thursday, August 23, 2018
MONICA SHOWALTER - ILLEGAL ALIEN-EXPORTING EL SALVAGOR HANDS RED CHINA A SEA PORT
Gratitude: El Salvador hands a port to China, worrying US military officials
China's military expansion around the Pacific is going great – on the east side, at least, not thewest.
Illegal alien-exporting El Salvador has decided to give China its very own port, one that U.S. officials have said could easily be converted to military applications to threaten us. According to the South China Morning Post:
El Salvador might be a small nation, but the United States is worried it has something more to offer mainland China than diplomatic recognition: a port that could be used for military purposes.
While Taipei has accused Beijing of luring its allies away with generous aid offers, Washington sees the latest switch as not just a case of piling more pressure on the self-ruled island, but a move to shore up mainland China's security and strategic planning in the region.
Jean Manes, the US ambassador to El Salvador, tweeted on Tuesday that the United States was concerned about the Central American nation's decision to break ties with Taiwan.
"Without a doubt, this will impact our relationship with the government. We continue supporting the Salvadoran people," she said.
The Post explains that the origins of this were skeevy: El Salvador tried to shake down Taiwan for development funds for the port, and Taiwan said it wouldn't get enough business to make the project sustainable. Taiwan would simply lose whatever billions it would take to get the thing up. Enter China, which doesn't really care if a project is economically sustainable; the Chinese are happy to pretend it is, because the object, of course, is military.
This is why U.S. officials are concerned.
For the rest of us, all we can do is ask, "How's that for gratitude?"
El Salvador is one of the leading exporters of illegal aliens to the U.S., housing one out of every five Salvadorans and more than a million people. Home of MS-13 gangs, it's gotten $4.4 billion in aid from the U.S. for gang control, tax collection, malaria eradication, land reform, disaster relief, think-tanks, and other stuff. What's more, its illegals have repeatedly been extended long stays in the U.S. after disasters. It also has free trade with the U.S. Have a problem? Gringo is right there. What's more, its illegals are among the lowest assimilated, lowest educated, and lowest English-speaking of all immigrants, meaning the U.S. pays billions that aren't counted in El Salvador's foreign aid package to house, educate, feed, clothe, jail, and medicate its illegals. We do it all, and their government gives us a China base to worry about.
Maybe it's time to cut off aid, scrap free trade, and start stepping up immigration enforcement against this rogue state and the nationals it dumps on us. Let China pick up the tab. China has a long history of cleaning up and profiting from costly American adventures (it got all the oil after we expended all the blood and treasure to clean out Iraq). We see the same pattern here. We pay, and China cleans up. So let China get a whiff of how costly it is to run an unsustainable military port. And let El Salvador learn the hard way that China involvement isn't quite as rosy as the Chinese say it is (the way Malaysia has learned), and the gringo gravy train is done.
President Trump needs to get tough on this one.
OPIOID AMERICA: CHINA AND MEXICO PARTNER TO ADDICT AMERICA
“While drug distributors have paid a total of $400 million in fines over the past 10 years, their combined revenue during this same period was over $5 trillion.”
“Opioids have ravaged families and devastated communities across the country. Encouraging their open use undermines the rule of law and will do nothing to quell their continued abuse, let alone the problems underlying mass addiction.”
The opioid crisis
By Niles Niemuth 23 August 2018
Niles Niemuth is the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Congress in Michigan 12thcongressional district, which includes the Downriver area. Visitniles2018.com to donate and get involved in the campaign.
A new report has revealed the horrific impact of the opioid crisis across Michigan, which requires an emergency response.
The report, produced by the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) and Appriss Health, found a 30 percent increase in drug-related overdose deaths in Michigan between 2013 and 2015. Most of these deaths were from opioids, a class of drug that includes illegal forms such as heroin, as well as many pharmaceutical forms used to treat pain, such as as hydrocodone and oxycodone (known by the brand names Vicodin and OxyContin, respectively).
The report shows that six of the top ten cities for overdose deaths in the state were in Downriver, the 18 suburban Michigan cities and townships southwest of Detroit. The six cities are Lincoln Park, Wyandotte, Ecorse, Flat Rock, Woodhaven and Southgate. The community of Lincoln Park topped the overdose death rate among Michigan cities with 3.2 deaths per 1,000 people. In total deaths, Detroit topped Michigan cities, with 447 fatal overdoses over three years. However, its death rate was a third of Lincoln Park’s.
The drug largely responsible for the increase in many areas is a specific type of opioid called fentanyl, which is so strong that it is used to tranquilize elephants and carry out executions. It is cheaper and about 50 times more potent than heroin. According to preliminary calculations, about three-quarters of fatal overdoses in Wayne County were tied to fentanyl, an eight-fold increase in three years.
The opioid epidemic has touched every part of the state. A recent report on Macomb County, a suburb north of Detroit, showed that the number of deaths involving fentanyl jumped 38 percent between 2016 and 2017 from 144 to 199. The increase contributed to a record death toll from drug overdoses in the county—380 people or more than one a day.
The massive death toll is a national public health emergency on a scale not seen since the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. According to new CDC data, in 2017 drug overdose deaths in the US topped 72,000, which is 6,000 more than in 2016, a rise of 9.5 percent. Nearly 30,000 deaths involved opioids, an increase of more than 9,000 (nearly 50 percent) from previous year.
The number of people directly impacted by the crisis—including family members, friends and colleagues, medical responders, social workers and many others—is in the millions.
The drug epidemic is the product of capitalism and the policies of the capitalist parties, both Democrats and Republicans. There is, first of all, the role of the pharmaceutical companies, which have amassed huge profits from the deceptive marketing of opioid pain killers, which they claimed were not addictive. Prescriptions for opioids such as Percocet, Oxycontin and Vicodin skyrocketed from 76 million in 1991 to nearly 259 million in 2012, enough to supply each American adult with a bottle of pills, and some with two.
The promotion of addictive pain killers was made possible by the immense need for such medication—one consequence of the conditions confronting American workers. A recent report found that many workers in dangerous jobs resorted to aggressive pain killers to allow them to continue working because they were afraid of the economic consequences of missed work.
Drug abuse and addition, moreover, feeds on social distress and inequality. The regions most affected by the opioid epidemic include those that have been most devastated by deindustrialization, the destruction of jobs, and the unrelenting attack on social programs, wages, public education and health care. This includes Downriver Michigan, which has been impacted by the destruction of auto and steel jobs over the past four decades.
Neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any intention of or capacity to address this crisis, for it is their bipartisan policy of social counter-revolution that has produced it. Trump is carrying out a war on the working class, handing billions of dollars to the corporate and financial elite. Yet he is only continuing the policies of his predecessor, Obama, who left office after ensuring the bailout of the banks and the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich in American history.
In response to the drug epidemic, Republican politicians and the Trump administration advocate a “law and order” approach, such as cracking down on low-level drug dealers and scapegoating immigrants. Some demand that individuals suffering from overdoses be denied life-saving treatment.
The Democratic Party is no less culpable. It is facilitating Trump’s attacks on workers while posturing here and there by proposing palliatives that leave untouched the underlying causes. My opponent in the 12th district, Debbie Dingell, has sponsored four such bills in congress aimed at an array of symptoms: safe disposal of unused drugs after a hospice patient’s death, sharing medical records between doctors, improving the over-the-counter monograph system, and calling for a paltry increase in funding for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research.
A drop in the ocean!
The socialist response to the opioid crisis, and drug abuse more generally, is based on the abolition of its causes.
The Socialist Equality Party insists that billions of dollars must be allocated to fund rehabilitation centers, using the most advanced scientific methods and procedures. The health care system must be equipped with detox centers and connected to institutions to help with long-term recovery. All social workers in the field must receive an immediate 50 percent wage increase, along with the counseling and support needed. Children must be given the highest level of care while their parents recover.
Profit must be taken out of health care, which is a social right that must be guaranteed to everyone. The giant pharmaceutical companies must be transformed into publicly-owned utilities. The health insurance industry must be abolished and replaced with universal, socialized medicine.
Such elementary measures and more must be connected to the reconstruction of society to ensure that everyone has the right to a high-paying job, health care, education and quality housing, and that workers have access to leisure, art and culture. Cities devastated by deindustrialization must be rebuilt through a multi-trillion-dollar public works program.
The resources to pay for these necessary measures must come from the expropriation of the wealth of the corporate and financial elite, the parasites on society, who have amassed unimaginable fortunes through the exploitation and immiseration of the vast majority. As tens of thousands die, the ruling class conspires to spend trillions on war and conjure up new ways to increase its wealth.
These measures are component parts of the socialist transformation of American and world society. All the major banks and corporations must be placed under the democratic control of the population, to meet social needs and the rights of the working class, not private profit.
The disease of which the drug epidemic is a symptom is
capitalism. It can be cured only through the mobilization of the
entire working class, independently of the Democrats and
Republicans, in a revolutionary movement to abolish inequality,
war and the capitalist profit system.
Chinese Nationals Charged with Alleged Synthetic Opioid Conspiracy
Two Chinese nationals were indicted Wednesday for allegedly making and selling deadly drugs leading to the fatal overdoses of two American citizens in Ohio.
Fujing Zheng, also known as Gordon Jin, 35, and his father, Guanghua Zheng, 62, are accused of operating a global opioid and drug manufacturing conspiracy where the fatal drugs were sent to 37 states and 25 countries, according to the indictment released Wednesday by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department said the drugs sold led to the deaths of two men in Akron, Ohio, who fatally overdosed on the drugs.
The suspects used multiple companies to manufacture and distribute a number of controlled substances, including fentanyl analogues, according to the indictment.
The indictment states that the Zhengs also created websites to market and sell the illegal drugs in at least 35 different languages.
“Fentanyl and its analogues are the number one killer drug in America today, and most of them come from China,” Attorney General Sessions said in a statement. “By cutting off fentanyl and its analogues at the source, we can save American lives.”
Sessions’ DOJ has called for harsh penalties for extreme drug offenders, including the death penalty for the most serious cases. The attorney general released a memo in March citing the number of American deaths caused by overdoses from fentanyl and its analogues, urging prosecutors to consider the death penalty for cases where deaths occurred.
“Drug overdoses, including overdoses caused by the lethal substance fentanyl and its analogues, killed more than 64,000 Americans in 2016 and now rank as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50,” Sessions explained in his memo.
“To combat this deadly epidemic, federal prosecutors must consider every lawful tool at their disposal,” Sessions added. “In addition, this should also include the pursuit of capital punishment in appropriate cases.”
The Chinese nationals, both from Shanghai, face multiple charges, including several counts of conspiracy, operating a criminal enterprise, and money laundering. If convicted, both men could face life in prison because the drugs caused the deaths of two citizens.
“DEA will relentlessly pursue anyone shipping deadly fentanyl analogues to the United States wherever they may be and bring them to justice,” said DEA Acting Administrator Dhillon. “These Chinese drug traffickers are directly responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens and we will hold them accountable in a U.S. court of law.” JUDICIAL WATCH:
“While drug distributors have paid a total of $400 million in fines over the past 10 years, their combined revenue during this same period was over $5 trillion.”
“Opioids have ravaged families and devastated communities across the country. Encouraging their open use undermines the rule of law and will do nothing to quell their continued abuse, let alone the problems underlying mass addiction.”
"Most of the illicit fentanyl is manufactured in China and most illicit opioids enter the United States through Mexico or via the postal service."
Local police and paramedics administer opioid-blocker Narcan to revive a man who is overdosing in the Drexel neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times
WASHINGTON—The illicit opioids being manufactured in China and shipped to the United States are “almost a form of warfare,” President Donald Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Aug. 16.
“In China, you have some pretty big companies sending that garbage and killing our people,” Trump said.
More than 71,500 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2017, according to provisional data released Aug. 15 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 68 percent of those deaths can be attributed to opioids.
Trump asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “take a look at the fentanyl that’s coming out of China and Mexico” and “do whatever you can do legally to stop it.”
Most illicit synthetic opioids are manufactured in China (and increasingly Mexico), and enter the United States via Mexico or the postal system.
Fentanyl, the most common synthetic opioid, was originally developed as a painkiller and anesthetic. It is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin—two milligrams of fentanyl is a lethal dose for a non-opioid user.
It is often mixed in with heroin or pressed into fake painkiller pills made to look like real prescription drugs, making them more deadly.
Carfentanil is less common but much more lethal; it is used as an elephant tranquilizer and is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Even a few specks of airborne powder can be fatal.
Between 2013 and 2014, there was a 79 percent increase in deaths related to synthetic opioids, according to the 2016 DEA heroin report. Since then, the trend has continued to climb.
Local law enforcement and emergency services assist a man who is overdosing in the Drexel neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2017. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)
Trevor Loudon, an expert on communism and Epoch Times columnist, said it’s an “absolute fact” that the fentanyl is coming from China.
“And you can’t tell me that in a police state like China—where they know everybody and what everybody is doing—you cannot tell me the Chinese government is not aware of it. You cannot tell me the Chinese government is not controlling it and funding it,” he said in a May 10 interview.
“So that is a form of undeclared war against the Western countries.”
The book “Red Cocaine” by Joseph Douglass Jr. shows how the Chinese regime began pushing the heroin and opium trade back in the 1950s, Loudon said.
“They were behind much of the heroin and world drug trade and they were cooperating with the cartels in Latin America,” he said.
“If you want to target Western countries and destroy them, and soften them up, and get enough money for your revolution, you would be crazy not to be involved in the drug trade.”
Factories in China
Last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its first indictments against two Chinese manufacturers of fentanyl and other opiate substances.
“[They] have been using the internet to sell fentanyl and fentanyl analogues to drug traffickers and individual customers in the United States,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a statement on Oct. 17, 2017.
Over at least six years, suspect Xiaobing Yan is alleged to have operated websites advertising and selling acetyl fentanyl and other deadly fentanyl analogues directly to U.S. customers in multiple cities across the country, according to the DOJ. The case was brought by a federal court in Mississippi.
“Yan operated at least two chemical plants in China that were capable of producing ton quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues,” Rosenstein said. “Yan monitored legislation and law-enforcement activities in the United States and China, modifying the chemical structure of the fentanyl analogues he produced to evade prosecution in the United States.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration depicts the flow of illicit opioids from China into the United States in a recent report. (DEA)
In a case brought in federal court in North Dakota, investigators traced the imported drugs back to Jian Zhang in China, who is alleged to have manufactured fentanyl in at least four labs in China and sold it to customers in the United States, using the darkweb and the crypto-currency bitcoin.
“Zhang’s organization would send orders of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and pill presses, stamps, and dies used to shape fentanyl into pills, to customers in the United States through the mail or international parcel delivery services,” Rosenstein said. “Zhang sent many thousands of these packages since January 2013.”
Postal System
The U.S. Postal Service handled more than 275 million inbound international packages in 2016, according to an investigative report conducted by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and published in January.
That volume is three times larger than the combined volume (approximately 65.7 million) handled by the three largest express services—FedEx, UPS, and DHL.
Over a three-month period, the subcommittee communicated with six online sellers, posing as a first-time fentanyl purchaser.
“All of the online sellers actively sought to induce a purchase of fentanyl or other illicit opioid,” the report said. “They all preferred to ship any purchases to the United States through the international arm of the Postal Service.”
A woman unloads a USPS truck in Norfolk, Va., on Jan. 26, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
According to a July 2016 DEA report, “Customers can purchase fentanyl products from Chinese laboratories online” and “powdered fentanyls and pill presses” are shipped via mail services.
“Traffickers can typically purchase a kilogram of fentanyl powder for a few thousand dollars from a Chinese supplier, transform it into hundreds of thousands of pills, and sell the counterfeit pills for millions of dollars in profit,” the report said.
The subcommittee found that the online sellers preferred to be paid through cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which offers more anonymity, but accepted other payment options, such as Western Union, PayPal, credit cards, and prepaid gift cards. The subcommittee didn’t finalize an actual order during its investigation.
A packet of fentanyl for sale is found after a brief internet search on Jan. 25, 2018. (Screenshot)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is responsible for identifying suspicious packages sent through the international mail stream—primarily at mail centers located at five major airports, in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami.
For many years, CBP didn’t list China as a “country of interest,” due to the high volume of packages China shipped to the United States. This meant packages from China were not sent from the USPS to CBP for inspection.
In November 2015, the postal service launched a pilot program that used more advanced electronic data to track packages and divert them to CBP upon request. CBP specifically targeted small packages under 4.4 pounds coming from China through JFK airport in New York City.
“To avoid heightened targeting by CBP of packages from China, online sellers stated that they would divert packages through other countries first before the package ultimately arrived in the United States,” the report stated.
“This practice is known as transshipment. The online sellers asserted transshipping through these countries reduced the risk of a package containing illicit opioids from being identified and seized by customs officials.”
On average, for the 2017 calendar year, 64 percent of packages sent to the United States (318,890,000 packages) had no advanced electronic data about “who sent the package, where the package was going, or what was in the package,” according to the report.
The subcommittee said, based on its investigation, “that the federal government’s policies and procedures are inadequate to prevent the use of the international mail system to ship illegal synthetic opioids into the United States.”
Across the Southwest Border
Most illicit opioids coming across the southwest border are hidden in vehicles entering the United States through ports of entry.
So far in fiscal 2018, CBP agents at ports of entry have seized 1,304 pounds of fentanyl (as of June 30)—enough to make almost 4 million counterfeit pills containing 1.5 milligrams of fentanyl per pill. A further 336 pounds of fentanyl have been seized between ports of entry by Border Patrol.
In fiscal 2016, 440 pounds of fentanyl were seized at ports of entry, while in fiscal 2017, that spiked to 1,196 pounds, matching the trend in overdose deaths attributed to the substance.
So far this fiscal year, CBP has also seized 4,100 pounds of heroin, 42,800 pounds of cocaine, and 59,800 pounds of methamphetamine at ports of entry (as of June 30).
A Customs and Border Protection officer and his K-9 are ready to inspect vehicles entering the United States at the San Ysidro port of entry in California on April 9, 2018. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“The Chinese make huge money off this,” Loudon said. “It creates crime and chaos in target countries. It destroys the moral fabric of the target countries. It creates huge opportunities to corrupt public officials and businessmen.
“Something that’s killing thousands of Americans a year, don’t you think that’s war? Don’t you think that should be sanctioned and stopped?”
Loudon said past administrations have been too soft on China, afraid to offend its leaders.
“We don’t want to upset the Chinese government in any way. So they’ve been willing to tolerate Americans dying,” he said. “They need to close those borders and prosecute the offenders and trace it right back to China.”
He said the United States extradites drug traffickers from Latin America, Europe, and Africa.
“Well, let’s see them start to extradite Chinese Communist Party officials also involved in the drug trade, because I’m sure the CIA knows exactly who they are.”
For Help
If you or someone you know needs help for an opioid addiction, call the national helpline:
"Most of the illicit fentanyl is manufactured in China and most illicit opioids enter the United States through Mexico or via the postal service."
New CDC estimates: A record 72,000 US drug overdose deaths in 2017
By Kate Randall 17 August 2018
Drug overdose deaths in the US topped 72,000 in 2017, according to new provisional estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This staggering figure translates into about 200 drug overdose deaths every day, or about one every eight minutes.
The new CDC estimates are 6,000 deaths more than 2016 estimates, a rise of 9.5 percent. This has been primarily driven by a continued rise of deaths involving synthetic opioids, a category of drugs that includes fentanyl. Nearly 30,000 deaths involved these drugs in 2017, an increase of more than 9,000 (nearly 50 percent) over the previous year, according to preliminary data.
This catastrophic toll of opioid deaths casts a grim light on the state of America in the 21st century. At its root lies a society characterized by vast social inequality, corporate greed and government indifference. While the opioid crisis spares no segment of society, the most profoundly affected are workers and the poor, along with the communities where they live.
Deaths involving the stimulant cocaine also rose significantly, placing them on par with heroin and the category of natural opiates including painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. The CDC estimates suggest that deaths involving the latter two drugs appear to have flattened out.
The highest mortality rates in 2017 were distributed similarly to previous years, with parts of Appalachia and New England showing the largest figures. West Virginia again saw the highest death rates, with 58.7 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents, followed by the District of Columbia (50.4), Pennsylvania (44.2), Ohio (44.0) and Maryland (37.9). Nebraska had the lowest rate, 8.2 deaths per 100,000, one-seventh the West Virginia rate.
Two states with relatively high rates of overdose deaths, Vermont and Massachusetts, saw some decreases. The CDC credits this decrease to a leveling off of synthetic opioid availability and a modest increase in these states of funding for programs to fight addiction and provide treatment and rehabilitation.
Driving the increase in overdose deaths is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is roughly 50 times more potent that heroin. It is marketed under more than a dozen brand names in the US. Nebraska became the first state to use fentanyl in a state-sanctioned killing, using it Tuesday to execute Carey Dean Moore.
Fentanyl is also made illegally relatively easily and mixed with black market supplies of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and anti-anxiety medicines known as benzodiazepines. Individuals who have become addicted to prescription opioids often turn to illegally manufactured fentanyl, or related drugs that can be far more potent and dangerous, when prescription opioids are not available. Users cannot know the potency of such drugs or drug mixtures and are more likely to overdose.
The CDC reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), which identifies drugs from submissions tested for analysis, estimated that submissions testing positive have included two extremely potent drugs related to fentanyl, carfentanil and 3-methylfentanyl, which are 100 and 4 times more potent than fentanyl, respectively.
Purdue Pharma has drawn widespread criticism for its aggressive marketing and sale of the opioid OxyContin, which has a high potential for abuse, particularly for those with a history of addiction. The company also produces pain medications such as hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine and hydrocodone.
Regions with high levels of unemployment and poverty have been the target of drug distributors, shipping vast quantities of opioid painkillers to these areas. For example, McKesson Corporation shipped 151 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone between 2007 and 2012 to West Virginia, the state with the highest rate of overdose mortality.
Workers, both employed and unemployed, have found themselves in the grip of the opioid crisis. In an interview with Vox.com, Beth Macy, author of the new book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, describes the high levels of addiction in Machias, Maine, an early center of the opioid crisis. People in this logging and fishing community were already on painkillers from injuries due to these jobs and then became addicted to opioids—both prescription and illegal—and continue to overdose at high rates.
A study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health examined 4,302 opioid deaths from 2011 to 2015 among workers in all occupations in the state. It found that construction workers were six times more likely to die from opioid overdoses than the average worker, and that one in three construction-worker deaths were the result of overdoses.
There are fewer workers in farming, fishing and forestry in Massachusetts, but the report found these jobs also had an opioid mortality rate five times the average. The study found a link between higher rates of opioid abuse in occupations where back injuries are more common and paid sick leave is less so. In other words, workers become addicted to drugs—and face potential overdose—when they are forced to choose between working through pain or suffering a loss of wages.
Conservative estimates place the number of Americans with opioid abuse disorder at 2.6 million, but the real total is undoubtedly higher. To the 72,000 who succumbed to drug overdose in 2017 must be added those directly impacted by the crisis—family members, friends, coworkers, medical responders, social workers, treatment center workers, and many others.
Drug overdoses are part of a greater social crisis that is claiming the lives of increasing numbers. In December 2017, the CDC released reports revealing that life expectancy of the American working class is declining due to an increase in both drug overdoses and suicides. “Deaths of despair”—overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related deaths—are causing a dramatic increase in the mortality rate among those under the age of 44.
The decline in life expectancy, a fundamental measure of social progress, is an indication of both American capitalism’s decline and the sharp intensification of social inequality. While the richest five percent of the population owns 67 percent of the wealth, the poorest 60 percent owns just 1 percent.
Of the 72,000 Americans who died in drug overdoses in 2017, workers and the poor were the most affected. By contrast, the wealthiest Americans have access to the best medical care and technology available, and as a result live on average 20 years longer than the poorest members of US society.
The rise in drug overdoses is the product of a bipartisan assault of the social gains of the working class. Over the past 40 years, both the Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a conscious strategy to claw back the gains won by the working class in the first half of the 20th century. The response of both the Obama and Trump administrations to this crisis has amounted to a combination of indifference and distain for the lives lost.
The Obama administration slashed the number of DEA cases brought against drug distributors by 69.5 percent between 2011 and 2014. The Trump administration last year declared the opioid epidemic a “public health emergency,” but then allocated no new funding to the states to address it. Yet hundreds of billions are budgeted to fund the myriad wars prosecuted by the US military and for the persecution of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A health emergency on the scale of the drug epidemic requires an emergency, socialist response. Billions of dollars must be allocated to fund rehabilitation centers, utilizing the latest scientific treatments methods. The wealth of the drug manufacturers must be expropriated and their facilities placed under the control of the working class, as part of a socialized health care system that provides free health care for all.
Justice Department Plans More Cuts to Opioid Manufacturing
Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a press conference in Baltimore, Md., on Dec. 12, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department, through the Drug Enforcement Administration, plans to reduce 2019 opioid manufacturing quotas for the six most frequently misused opioids by an average of 10 percent from 2018 levels.
The six targeted opioids are fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, morphine, oxycodone, and oxymorphone.
The opioid manufacturing quota was heavily reduced in 2017, with four of the six target opioids reduced by 40 percent or more. The other two were each reduced by 27 percent.
The Justice Department’s 2019 plan lines up with President Donald Trump’s “Safe Prescribing Plan” that seeks to “cut nationwide opioid prescription fills by one-third within three years.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Aug. 16 that the opioid cuts will “make it harder to divert these drugs for abuse.”
In 2017, more than 71,500 Americans died from drug overdoses, according to provisional numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Aug. 15.
The majority of opioid addicts start their addiction through prescription pills—their own or those belonging to a friend or family member. Once hooked and the prescriptions run out, the addict turns to street pills or the cheaper options of heroin and fentanyl.
Most of the illicit fentanyl is manufactured in China and most illicit opioids enter the United States through Mexico or via the postal service.
During a cabinet meeting on Aug. 16, Trump asked Sessions to look into the opioids coming in from China and Mexico.
“In China, you have some pretty big companies sending that garbage and killing our people. It’s almost a form of warfare,” Trump said.
Sessions said the department is currently returning indictments against distributors from China.
“We’ve identified certain companies that are moving drugs from China, fentanyl in particular,” he said.
Sessions also agreed to look into bringing federal lawsuits against drug companies that supply opioids, rather than just joining state lawsuits.
Robin Ghertner (R), director of data and technical analysis in the Department of Health and Human Services's office of human services policy, and Chris Jones, director of mental health and substance use policy, SAMHSA, at the 2018 Opioid Roundtable hosted by the National Sheriffs Association and the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security, in Washington on May 3, 2018. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
WASHINGTON—Right now, 8.7 million children in the United States have parents with a substance use disorder.
Child welfare systems are overloaded, staff burnout is extreme, and foster homes are becoming more scarce, even as the need rises.
“We know that in a community, a 10 percent increase in fatal overdoses is associated with between 4 and 5 percent increase in foster care entries,” said Robin Ghertner, director of data and technical analysis with the Department of Health and Human Services, at an opioid roundtable in Washington on May 3.
“And research has shown consistently that opioids is a big part of that,” he said. “So this is a really, really nasty problem.”
Ghertner said more than 270,000 children entered the foster system in 2016, and one out of every three cases in which children were removed from home was due to parental substance use.
“It’s actually much higher than that. That’s just what’s reported through the data systems that we get at the federal level,” he said. In the more dramatic cases, Ghertner said, caseworkers are forced to have children stay in their offices or a hotel while they search for a foster home for them.
And, once in the system, the child’s chances of being reunited with his or her parents are worsening.
“There’s an intense amount of pessimism in the child welfare system,” Ghertner said. He said judges and caseworkers used to be optimistic that “a good portion” of the children that are removed from home are going to go back to their families.
“It’s not that way anymore in a lot of communities,” he said. “There are communities in New England and Appalachia where it’s few and far between that a child will go back to the parent. So it’s very depressing circumstances.”
What we’re trying to do right now is a much more humane approach to dealing with families who are struggling with a disease.
— Dr. William Bell, president and CEO, Casey Family Programs
Since fiscal year 2013, the number of children whose parents’ rights were terminated has increased—from 58,700 in 2013 to 65,300 in fiscal 2016, according to data from Health and Human Services.
Alongside the increase in foster numbers, there has been a big jump in the number of extended family members taking in children.
Around 2.6 million grandparents are raising children, according to 2015 census statistics.
Treatment
Ghertner said a dearth of family-friendly treatment options exacerbates the problem.
Medication-assisted treatment is the accepted treatment protocol for opioid addiction, but most addicts have a host of other issues going on at the same time.
The most commonly used version of medication-assisted treatment is suboxone, which is a combination of buprenorphine (an opioid) and naloxone (which blocks the effects of opioids).
Suboxone has been used for opioid addiction since 2002, and methadone, the other main medication-assisted treatment, has been around for decades.
Vivitrol, a relatively new drug, is an injection of naltrexone that blocks opioid receptors in the brain for one month at a time.
Gerthner said a lot more than medication-assisted treatment is needed, “particularly for people that are dealing with co-occurring problems.”
“And those can be co-occurring psychological/mental problems, they could also be housing, they could be employment—there are many, many things that go into this,” he said.
“And unfortunately … rural communities are particularly struck by the opioid crisis [and] typically do not have a lot of these services.”
A Successful Model
Dr. William Bell, president and CEO of Casey Family Programs, said the use of drug treatment courts is a huge step toward keeping families together.
“The courts began to work in a conversation with parents to say, ‘We know that you want your child back. We want you to have your child back. But we also know that you need to overcome this disease that you have. We will work with you to increase your capacity to see your child as long as you’re working to achieve the sobriety that we know is necessary and you want to have,’” he said at a February Senate hearing.
Dr. William Bell, president and CEO of Casey Family Programs, testifies at a Senate hearing on opioids, in Washington, on Feb. 8, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Casey Family Programs helped launch a pilot program in Ohio last year called START (Sobriety, Treatment, and Reducing Trauma). It aims to keep children at home or return them home as quickly as possible.
“Research has shown that when parents are able to get into treatment programs with their children in a timely manner, two-thirds of them complete the program compared with only one-fifth of parents who complete the program when their children are not allowed to stay in the treatment facility with them,” said Bell.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who helped launch START, said children with a parent or parents addicted to drugs tend to stay in foster care longer, and they enter foster care having experienced significant trauma.
“While mom and dad are high, these kids may go days without food or supervision. They may have witnessed a parent inject drugs, overdose, or even die,” he said in a statement. “By creating this program, we hope to help these 14 counties give the silent victims of the opioid epidemic—the children—the best care possible, while also helping their parents recover from their addiction.”
Referrals to the START program begin anytime, with the earliest being after an expecting mother tests positive for a substance in either the second or third trimester, said Bell. A positive drug test also triggers an immediate referral to child welfare. “At any stage, it has become a prima facie challenge of abuse and neglect to have a positively exposed child in utero,” Bell said.
The START team steps in and goes to the family home to conduct an assessment. The team includes a peer mentor, who is someone in addiction recovery or who has lived in the child welfare system.
The family can then choose to participate in the START program, which will assist with treatment, recovery, transportation, and peer support.
Ohio START is modeled on a similar program in Kentucky that resulted in about half as many children returning to foster care due to parental addiction, according to DeWine. Parents involved in the Kentucky program were also found to have twice the sobriety rate.
Bell relates the current situation to his experience of being in New York City during the middle of the crack epidemic.
“I like to do the comparison between what happened when crack was the issue and what we’re trying to do right now in the opioid crisis,” he said. “What we’re trying to do right now is a much more humane approach to dealing with families who are struggling with a disease.
“Under the crack epidemic, that woman would have been referred to child welfare, we would have done an investigation, and in all likelihood, we would have removed that child and placed that child in foster care.
“She would have been in the court system, maybe represented by a quality attorney, maybe not. Her child would have been languishing in foster care, and she would have had a long list of things that she had to complete in order to get her child back—including housing, including parenting skills, including overcoming substance abuse.”
PRINCETON REPORT:
American middle-class is addicted, poor, jobless and suicidal…. Thank the corrupt government for surrendering our borders to 40 million looting Mexicans and then handing the bills to middle America?
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