Along with rampant drug addiction and a surge in violent crime, America’s experiment with criminal justice reform has led to some pretty unlikely policy proposals. Take a recent report from NPR arguing that reducing drug busts will ultimately save lives. While it may sound odd, it turns out there’s a short-term correlation between arresting drug dealers and an increase in overdose deaths in the surrounding communities.
It’s a compelling tale — especially for progressive activists eager to diminish the role of law enforcement in ending addiction. However, the only data cited came from a study based on just 12 months of research from a single county in Indiana. Despite this limited sample set, activists nationwide have used the study to try and send cops packing. This is a mistake – with likely deadly consequences.
Oregon, for instance, decriminalized the sale and use of drugs with the passing of measure 110 in 2020, which was touted by progressives as a way to encourage treatment and save lives. Instead, overdose rates nearly tripled from 2019-2021 — causing the state to become the “canary in the coal mine” for soft-on-crime drug reform legislation.
Oregon’s overdose death numbers have continued to climb into 2023 as the state’s understaffed police departments turn a blind eye to dealers — and the overdoses they facilitate. Indeed, those spiraling death numbers prompted a coalition of political, civic, and business leaders to actually call for Measure 10’s reversal this past August.
Similar long-term trends can be seen in New York, where busts for felony drug sales dropped 28% from 2019 to 2021, while overdose deaths have skyrocketed 78% over the past four years. And of course there’s San Francisco — ground zero for the nation’s fentanyl crisis — which is reporting similarly dismal data.
From 2012 to 2022, the three-month average number of drug sales arrests in San Francisco plummeted from over 200 to less than 40, while deaths from overdoses during the same period climbed 441%. Obviously other factors come into play, such as changes in drug potency. But this alarming body count demonstrates a clear correlation between the decline in preventing drug sales and an increase in death numbers.
The study cited by NPR demonstrated that the overdose rate temporarily spiked after drug busts. However, the study was unable to establish causality, and the short-term data was severely limited in scope. More importantly, this approach does nothing to combat the fundamental cause of overdoses, which are the drugs themselves.
Increasingly, that drug is fentanyl, now responsible for 75% of opioid-related deaths nationwide. Reduce drug busts, and fentanyl will only further flood markets causing overdose to rise over the long-term as the drug finds even easier pathways onto the streets. And the resulting casualties are bound to include not just hard-core addicts, but the recreational “soft” drug users whose tragic deaths fill endless headlines.
The battle against the opioid crisis isn’t going to be easy, but simply surrendering to fentanyl and succumbing to addictions is not the answer. Instead, the majority of our efforts should to be focused on addressing the foundation of the problem: the addiction itself.
As a former homeless opiate addict, I was given ample means to feed my disease: Free needles, crack pipes, and general cash relief. But what my addiction most was the decriminalization of my bad behavior. I was essentially granted a license to commit the petty thievery that funded my habit and then get aggressively high in public. All without care or consequence. And I was not alone — across California homelessness climbed 42% from 2014 to 2020, while overdose deaths in Los Angeles County rose by over 250% during the same time. Most of that mayhem was due to Prop 47, whose 2014 passage essentially decriminalized burglary and commercial shoplifting — a gift to addicts like myself.
There are many reasons overdoses can rise after drug dealers are arrested – such as a shift to untested batches or a sudden reliance on dubious dealers. But this does not mean an end to drug seizures.
Instead, along with a robust enforcement infrastructure, we must embrace a multi-pronged eradication approach which includes overdose prevention, public treatment centers and the aggressive elimination of street fentanyl. This lack of concerted effort — not drug busts — is responsible for the nation’s current wave of overdose deaths. Which is why compromise can never be an option in a war with a substance so deadly.