Written by Willow Kang
There is no question that the drug market in America, both legal and illicit, is expanding. In the United States, there are more than 20,000 prescription drugs already approved for prescription, with 4.38 billion retail prescriptions filled in 2019 alone. A sizable portion of these drugs are opioids. In 2006, national opioid prescription rates in the US steadily increased, and eventually peaked in 2012, with a dispensing rate of 81.3 prescriptions per 100 persons. In 2020, the national dispensing rate was at 43.4 prescriptions per 100 people, but some states had 9 times higher that figure. At the same time, there is also a vibrant illicit opioid market running in the background and rising rates of opioid misuse. More than 76 000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose. In 2016, the national rate of opioid-related hospitalization was 297 per 100,000 people. In 2019, an estimated 10.1 people aged 12 or older were reported to be misusing opioids. Clearly, opioids and drug use in the United States is becoming a serious crisis. And it is corporate and consumer capitalism that fuels this crisis, with violence a tragic consequence.
The drug scene first began a significant expansion in the early 1950s. Thorazine is the first neuroleptic drug to have arrived on the psychiatric scene. It received FDA approval in 1955, and by 1958 was used widely in mental hospitals in America to treat schizophrenic symptoms. Between 1993 and 2001, prescription drug spending tripled in the US, and by 2000 spending on anti-depressant drugs rose to 800%. This adoption rate of drugs is unusually fast. The real reason for this is not that the drug was proven to be useful, but rather that pharmaceutical companies spent much more effort on marketing the drugs to the public. The major pharmaceutical companies spent an average of 30%-40% of revenues on marketing, but only 12-15% on research and development. Marketing tactics consisted of the following steps: Drug companies would first lobby for FDA approval while conducting as many tests as are needed to meet the conditions set by the FDA. Secondly, publications of drug studies will be authored by high profile writers but ghost authored by the pharmaceutical company. Following that, sales representatives will distribute promotional materials to doctors, and legislators will be lobbied to make sure company interests are well represented. During a lawsuit targeting Purdue Pharma, they admitted to knowing that opioids are addictive but choosing not to disclose it to the public. Evidently, pharmaceutical companies were prioritizing profits over lives.
On September 25th, 2020, the newspaper USA Today released a report analyzing financial conflicts at 159 FDA advisory committee meetings from January 1st, 1998 through June 30th 2000. They found that at 92% of the meetings, at least one member had a financial conflict of interest, and at 55% of the meetings, at least half of the FDA advisors have conflicts of interests. This is unsurprising, given that in 2001, the companies had 625 paid lobbyists in Washington, with $250 million USD spent collectively on both Democratic and Republican parties. In 2001, 83000 ‘sales representatives’ were sent to doctor offices, supplying them with sanitized information, drug samples, and other promotional materials. In 2002, more than 50% of drug studies were ghost authored, or closely vetted by pharmaceutical companies.
Drug use declined from 2012 as more evidence on the harmfulness of these drugs became more known. Pharmaceutical companies began opening new markets overseas. Opioid misuse is a burgeoning problem in Latin America, Asia, and some other parts of the world. Experts have already warned of a serious ‘drug epidemic’ outside of the US. There is no question that pharmaceutical companies are an ignored culprit in the opioid epidemic. Many studies have corroborated a link between rising rates of drug misuse and an increase in the number of drugs prescribed every year. For example, between 1999 and 2018, the quantity of prescribed opioids quadrupled, but there was no change in the ‘amount of pain’ reported by Americans. In addition, according to the estimates by the World Health Organization, the percentage of opioids available per patient suffering from severe health problems in 2015 in the United States was 31 times greater than necessary. With opioid misuse becoming more widespread, the illicit drug market also became diversified. This expansion in part is operated by Mexican and Dominican criminal groups. What excess of drugs the domestic consumer market in the US cannot absorb will be circulated in the illicit market instead. This needless excess in opioids have also paved the way for state violence and the devastating effects of hyper-consumer culture to take root in young and marginalized populations.
The U.S is a highly unequal society in terms of wealth. In 2018, the highest-earning 20% of families made more than half of total US income. Among G7 countries, the U.S is the most unequal country. Out of the U.S population, more than 10 million (14.4%) of children and teens live in poverty. 4 in 10 children live in a household struggling to meet basic expenses, and at least 7 million children do not have enough money to buy sufficient, nutritious food to eat. Low-income communities face several structural disadvantages, like attending schools with inexperienced teachers, poor-quality housing, and environments with elevated levels of violence, that hinder children from climbing the socioeconomic ladder. Adding to these, the unemployment rate of youth in the U.S was 11.6% in November 2020. Although 11.6% is a low figure, 47% of youths were working minimum wage jobs. Crime rates among youths are also high. Today, there are 60,000 youth under age 18 incarcerated in juvenile jails in the United States. Of all minors imprisoned in the state juvenile justice system, 80% were arrested or charged in relation to drug-related or alcohol-related offenses.
Aside from stark levels of financial inequality, the world is also seeing hyper-competitive individualistic culture becoming ever more pervasive. This is, to some extent, the result of consumer capitalism acting through social media. 51% of American teenagers report accessing a social media site daily. Today’s teenagers are more connected to social media than their predecessors. Social media is a window to the world of the wealthy and their extravagant lifestyles, at the same time belittling the lifestyles of those in poverty. These constant streams of snapshots widen the gulf between bleak realities and the hope of material wealth. Multinational giant corporations shout slogans like success is earned, not given’, or ‘a crown for every achievement’. This is the unsettling lull of consumer capitalism, that one's success in life depends primarily on the products that they can afford to consume. Failure to amass this money to buy these products are taken as a sure sign of fault on the individual's part. This is also what pushes young people into a state of anomie in order to achieve capitalism’s goals.
Criminologists have observed a rising trend of youths promoting drug distributions online. They often do this by displaying their earnings from drug distributions, accompanied with captions like ‘Born naked die designer’, ‘money motivated’, or other captions that convey a sense of wealth. That first caption implies that the profits from drug distributions are worthy compensations for the dangers that accompany drug distribution. There are no precise estimates on the amounts that youths can make through drug distributions, but dealers overstress that it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short period of time. Even for entry-level drug runners, this appears to be a better alternative to working grueling minimum-wage jobs. A common theme among those social media posts is that, despite being born into poverty, the were able to live a rewarding life of wealth in the end. Social media posts also frequently show material items that the earnings are used to purchase, thus fulfilling the goals of consumer capitalism. These symbols of social status and success, acquired through drug dealings, are broadcasted to vast swathes of other equally success-hungry youths. With the help of social media, young people can now flaunt their newfound success in front of global audiences. Another prospect as undesirable as minimum wage work is resorting to dependence on state welfare benefits. Among young people, receiving state welfare benefits is highly stigmatized and seen as a sign of weakness. For many poor people, state welfare benefits are simply not enough to obtain a more conducive environment for development.
Some of the political responses to youth involvement in drug distribution include framing it as a process of adults exploiting children through coercive tactics. This is akin to the ‘Rochdale grooming scandal’, where many professionals cited young girls’ uninformed decision-making skills as the key factor behind their sexual exploitation, as exposed to exploitation by predatory adults. In the context of youth involvement in drug distribution, this places blame on the individuals, instead of changing the systems that facilitate this in the first place. Interviews conducted on youths involved in drug distribution also show that some youths willingly enter the drug distribution scene, lured by promises of fast cash. Besieged by factors such as poverty, poor housing, unemployment, and violence, those youths may find drug dealing to be preferable. Analysis of their social media posts and interviews also hints at a disdain for police, as the police are ‘immoral enforcers of unjust laws’ in their eyes. As business and political elites advance their own interests at the expense of the middle and lower classes, young people are becoming willing victims of this system.
The drug trade is also instrumental in state violence and systemic discrimination. The fight against drugs has been termed as a ‘war.’ This presupposes violence and opposing sides. Many criminal groups worldwide are involved in transnational drug trafficking. The illicit drug market is one of the main sources of funding for these criminal groups as well. According to the DEA, Latin American criminal groups are mostly responsible for promoting and controlling the distribution and sale of opioids along the East Coast of the United States. When Donald Trump envisioned a ‘drug-free society’, he was not referring to a society without opioids but to a society where opioids are produced and marketed by legal pharmaceutical companies. This asserts that pharmaceutical companies are the ‘benevolent players’ while demonizing the illicit markets. This is in spite of the fact that illicit markets are the by-products of the illicit market, The implications of this are that states would protect pharmaceutical companies, while state violence will be directed towards individuals suspected of participating in the drug trade. ‘War’ also necessitates a devaluing of civil rights of the ‘enemy.’ In this case, the ‘enemy’ appears to be the Latin American populations. Indeed, Latin Americans have witnessed increasing violence and discrimination against them. In Mexico, this ‘war’ also results in forcible displacements, seizing of public or communally held lands, and the suppression of Indigenous consumption products. An example of a ‘police pacification program’ can be found in 2015 in Rio De Janeiro. The program originally aimed to move police into low-income communities to deal with petty crimes, domestic violence, and drug distribution. However, the police presence also led to innocent residents being shot. US politicians have since called for tougher laws on drug distribution, but many experts have pointed out that this will exacerbate the mass incarceration of marginalized races. The US imprisons more people than most other countries, with a staggering rate of 698 per 100,000 residents, with Black Americans incarcerated 5 times the rate of White Americans, and Latinx incarcerated at 1.3 times the rate of White Americans.
Every year, at least 100,00 people in the United States die from a drug overdose. This epidemic of drug misuse was partly started by pharmaceutical corporations, who played down the dangers of their drugs in a bid to increase profits for themselves. Vast inequalities, combined with consumer capitalism, led to more young people getting embroiled in drug distribution, subject to peer pressure and the constant glare of social media. Drug distribution is also a security concern for the United States. This framing of the fight against drugs as ‘war’ brought on violence against undeserving marginalized communities. Drug capitalism generated from big pharma thus has two heads: One, the licit market set up by pharmaceutical companies promoted high rates of drug misuse, and consequently, overdoses among the American populace; Second, the excess products from the licit market indirectly led to the expansion of the illicit market for opioid drugs. Such are the toxic effects of capitalism.
Written by Willow,
@oldmanheart on Instagram.