Category: News & Blogs

By Dr. Carr McClain

I give patients the synthetic opioid fentanyl almost every day in my surgical practice. It’s safer and has fewer side effects than Morphine, yet it’s now by far the leading cause of drug overdose deaths in America.  Fentanyl itself is not the problem. Legal, regulated, properly administered fentanyl kills no one.  Unlabeled, black-market fentanyl, which only exists because of the prohibition of other popular drugs, now kills thousands every year.   If we want consumers to stop buying unregulated narcotics and dying, we should consider allowing adults to have broader legal access to narcotics. It could save tens of thousands of lives every year.

Fentanyl is not a new drug.  It has been used in medical settings for decades. Most Americans who ingest it do so safely, under a doctor’s care.  They do not become addicted, overdose, or die. Today’s fentanyl crisis started because of a principle called The Iron Law of Prohibition.  This holds that when a class of drug is made illegal, the prevailing form will become more concentrated and potent, making it easier to hide and transport while avoiding detection.  We’ve seen this before:  Alcohol prohibition caused hard liquor consumption to explode in a country that previously drank mostly beer.

Over the last 20 years, we have witnessed this phenomenon with narcotics. The over-prescription of legal opioid painkillers was a real problem. But it was met with the ineffective drug policies of the last 50 years: interventions to control the availability of prescriptions, efforts to cut many patients off entirely, then arrests and imprisonment for the crime of being addicted to a socially unacceptable substance. The result? People who previously got properly labeled Percocet and Lortab from a doctor were drawn to obtain unlabeled narcotics from street vendors. At the same time, fentanyl became the perfect additive to increase potency, thereby decreasing the packaging size of other illegal narcotics.  Fentanyl is inexpensive to manufacture, and as a synthetic opioid, it does not require the cultivation and harvesting of poppies – the source of morphine and heroin.  The decrease in access to legal, regulated narcotics has pushed more consumers to buy from the underground market, where the Iron Law of Prohibition has brought us unregulated fentanyl.

The Centers For Disease Control estimates that from November 2020 to November 2021, about 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.  Of those deaths, 70,000 were from synthetic opioids – fentanyl. (1)   Almost none of these deaths are suicides. They are accidents. Those seeking narcotics are not seeking fentanyl, and the seller on the street likely does not even know exactly what they are selling.  People obtain what they think is heroin, and instead, they ingest something 25-50 times stronger than heroin.  Their breathing is depressed, and they die. Imagine a diabetic buying unlabeled insulin on the street and inadvertently taking 50 times his needed dose. He would die.

Mississippi will soon have legal medical cannabis, supported by most voters. Cannabis legalization is finally well-accepted, but mention legalizing other drugs, and the tone changes. “Hard drugs? No way. They are addictive and deadly.”

Our approach to drugs is backward. The more harmful or addictive a drug can be, the more important it is to regain regulatory control by legalizing it. No one is dying from cannabis overdoses. They are dying from overdoses of drugs like heroin, cocaine, and now fentanyl.

 Each drug overdose death is a tragedy that should stir our emotions.  These are preventable deaths. We can simultaneously grieve our lost brothers and sisters but be clinical about the circumstances of their deaths and the options for decreasing those deaths.  Legal, regulated, and properly administered narcotics would save the lives of thousands of people and open a much wider door to treatment for those who develop an addiction.  Will many of them remain dependent on opioids?  Perhaps. But isn’t the goal to reduce harm?   Allowing adults to have supervised access to legal, regulated narcotics will keep them from resorting to the deadly unlabeled products sold by criminals. If our goal is truly saving lives and minimizing harm, we must consider policies that actually do that.

 

1.    www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

Dr. Carr McClain is a cardiovascular surgeon at Forrest General Hospital.  He lives with his family in Hattiesburg, MS. 

By Christina Dent

Seven years ago, I became a foster mom. Through serving children and families in the foster care system, I saw that there are times when cannabis use can negatively impact a person’s life. But I also saw firsthand how the criminalization of cannabis produces far more devastation. For the last fifty years, our government’s approach to cannabis has ruined individuals, families, and communities.

As a Christian, I believe every person is made in the image of God and valuable beyond our imaginations. The sanctity of every single human life is one of my deepest values. Because of that, I believe government should enact drug policies that cause the least amount of harm to people. I’ve become convinced that ending cannabis prohibition is the best way to reduce harm.

Near the end of 2021, Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) introduced the States Reform Act to legalize and tax cannabis at the federal level. Less than ten years ago I would have adamantly opposed this kind of legislation, believing it conflicted with my conservative values and my evangelical Christian faith. Today I’m the Founder & President of End It For Good, a conservative Mississippi-based nonprofit inviting people to support approaches to drug policy that prioritize life and the opportunity to thrive. This includes ending cannabis prohibition. My values haven’t changed, but my understanding of the policies best aligned with those values has. And I’m not alone.

In my home state of Mississippi, 83% of us identify as Christian and more than half of Mississippians now support the legalization of cannabis for adult use. As I’ve traveled across Mississippi with End It For Good, leading educational events with well over 1,000 participants, I’ve heard why minds are changing. I’ve also listened to the concerns of many people who still support cannabis prohibition. Their concerns tend to fall into the categories of crime, kids, and moral compromise. I too want safe communities, healthy kids, and a culture with strong morals. Ending cannabis prohibition gets us closer to each of those, for the following reasons.

First, any popular substance that is banned from the legal economy will be supplied by a criminal underground market.  In this way, cannabis prohibition creates crime. As long as the cannabis industry is barred from legal operation, criminal activity is financially rewarded and billions of dollars from consumers are funneled directly into the coffers of organized crime every year. The prohibition of cannabis does not fight crime. It funds it.

Second, cannabis legalization does not lead to increased use among youth. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association looking at data from 10 states with cannabis programs found youth use either remained the same or decreased in the years after cannabis was legalized. This makes logical sense to me because under a state and federal ban my 13-year-old son can buy cannabis just as easily as a 33-year-old can. Dealers don’t check IDs. Legalization puts most cannabis transactions behind an age-restricted counter, offering at least one layer of protection to our children where prohibition offers none.

Third, many people of faith believe cannabis legalization is a loss of moral ground. I’ve become convinced the opposite is true. On the supply side, thousands of peopleare killed every year with predictable, preventable violence from the underground drug market. On the demand side, the lives of tens of thousands of consumers are ruined every year through unnecessary arrests. If they are incarcerated, they get disconnected from their work, family, housing, and community. When people come out of incarceration they’re traumatized and have a criminal record, making it immensely more difficult to build a thriving life.

This was brought home to me at one of End It For Good’s educational events. A career law enforcement officer came up to me afterward and said, “In all my years in law enforcement I’ve seen that marijuana is not a gateway drug, but the prosecution of marijuana is a gateway to a destroyed life.”

Even though cannabis prohibition is devastating to individuals and families, many people feel they can’t support legalization because of a personal or religious belief that recreational cannabis use is wrong. We can dialogue about that while agreeing that it shouldn’t be considered a criminal activity. Christians already separate religious belief from police action on a host of issues. Even the vast majority of the 10 Commandments in the Bible are not legally enforced, nor is anyone lobbying to make them so. Morality and legality are not the same things. It’s entirely possible to be against recreational cannabis use while simultaneously against making it a criminal activity.

There is no perfect path forward with cannabis, but I support legalization because it stops prohibition’s devastation from harming even more people who are made in the image of God. Congresswoman Mace has taken a courageous step by introducing the States Reform Act. Our kids, communities, and country are better served by ending cannabis prohibition.

Christina Dent is the Founder & President of End It For Good, a conservative drug policy reform nonprofit based in Mississippi. Her TEDx Talk details the journey that changed her mind on drug policy. Connect with her @ChristinaBDent on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

By Christina Dent

When my son was four years old, he was given the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Twice. We were in the emergency room at the hospital after his finger was crushed in a door. A cheerful nurse gave him fentanyl two times to numb the pain while a doctor stitched him up. At that time, grown men and women were dying by the thousands from overdoses involving fentanyl. Today they’re dying by the tens of thousands. What’s the difference? My son got fentanyl in a legal, regulated environment where it was protected from contamination and dosed accurately. People dying from fentanyl are getting it on the underground market where there’s no quality control and dosing is a risky guess. To save lives we have to address why people buy contaminated drugs on the street, and why those drugs are increasingly potent.

The Centers For Disease Control recently released provisional data on overdoses for 2020, showing fentanyl as a factor in almost 85% of opioid overdose deaths. Increased restrictions on prescriptions over the last decade have made legal, regulated drugs harder to get. But they haven’t stopped consumer demand. As restrictions on legal drugs mount, people buy illegal ones. This includes some pain patients who are desperate for relief after being cut off of their medication. Basic economics tells us supply will always meet demand, whether legally or illegally.

Suppliers of illegal drugs are risking arrest, though, so they need to smuggle small packages with big profit margins. Fentanyl fits the bill perfectly. It’s 50-100 times more potent than morphine, making a small quantity extremely profitable. Increased potency of drugs is a predictable outcome of the incentives of prohibition. Today we have fentanyl, but tomorrow it will be carfentanil or any number of increasingly potent drugs.

Decreased availability of legal drugs has led to increased demand for illegal ones. The incentives of prohibition have made illegal options increasingly potent while removing quality control. The collision of these policy disasters is driving today’s overdose epidemic.

Society’s knee-jerk reaction to do something – anything – to stop overdoses is understandable. Over 100,000 people died last year alone. A breathtaking tragedy. We often look to the criminal justice system to address drug problems, but cracking down is futile. There are hundreds of billions of dollars being offered by adult consumers every year, and a never-ending line of people willing to supply whatever drug consumers want. Getting consumers to stop buying potent, contaminated drugs off the street will require allowing them some form of legal access to quality-controlled options.

This is an uncomfortable idea for many people to grapple with, myself included. But the evidence is clear that prohibition is causing enormous loss of life. As someone whose deepest values include the sanctity of human life, I have to reckon with this. Another 100,000 families will pay the ultimate price for our failed drug policies in the next year alone.

But there’s hope. As we look towards a new year, we can choose a new path on drug policy. We can explore the least harmful ways to allow adults to access a safer supply of drugs. And we can simultaneously offer honest education about the risks as well as help for those struggling with addiction. This will give people the best chance of taking the most important step towards a thriving life – staying alive.

Fentanyl didn’t kill my son. Rather, it helped a traumatized little boy make it through a hard night in the hospital. I’m thankful for it. It helps thousands of patients in medical settings every day. Fentanyl is not the cause of our overdose epidemic. Our overdose epidemic is a result of policies that incentivize consumers to buy potent, contaminated drugs from the underground market. Allowing a pathway to legal, regulated options could save thousands of lives every year.

Christina Dent is the Founder & President of the nonprofit End It For Good. Her TEDx Talk details the journey that changed her mind on drug policy. She lives with her family in Ridgeland.

“We pray people change their thinking on this issue. It’s a matter of prioritizing life and allowing others to thrive.” — Lana Butler

Hi friends,

In early December I got the note above. Lana and her husband came to one of End It For Good’s events 2 years ago and she’s stayed in touch as they’ve continued to walk with her son, Brandon, through seasons of addiction and sobriety.

Less than a week later I got another message. Brandon had passed away.

It’s impossible to imagine the depth of this loss for Lana and her family. This is the very thing we work to prevent at End It For Good. It’s why we exist.

Brandon’s family chose gifts to End It For Good in lieu of flowers to honor Brandon’s life, and asked us to share this with the End It For Good community.

That’s a sacred trust.

Over the last 2 weeks, people who didn’t even know Brandon or his family have given as a way of expressing support.

By Dr. William Sansing

Recently a colleague and I were discussing taking new approaches to crime and addiction, and he said something I hope will stick with me for the rest of my life. He said, “It’s just easier to kick the can down the road by locking folks up and letting someone else deal with the problem.” The challenge with kicking the can of addiction is that the can has a way of compounding itself as new problems emerge from incarceration while the old ones continue.

In my professional experience as a therapist for people struggling with addiction, I’ve learned that locking people up often does just that. It doesn’t stop the addiction, and it frequently compounds the problems in that person’s life.

There is a saying in the addiction recovery world; you keep doing the work and keep coming back until the miracle occurs. Over the past 25 years, I have witnessed this occurrence among many people. I often share that recovery is a gift.

Striving to live a recovery lifestyle is nothing short of a miracle.

During late April, on a Thursday evening in the dining room at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, my wife and I, along with about 50 others from the Golden Triangle area of Mississippi, witnessed a different sort of miracle take place. A young woman from Jackson, Mississippi, and her team from the organization End It For Good hosted a groundbreaking community discussion about the harms from drugs in our community.

At the community discussion, Christina Dent gave a thought-provoking presentation about the harms of the war on drugs. Each attendee then had one minute to voice their thoughts and perspectives. The only rule was to be respectful. No arguing.

Their program is like another recovery saying: “It’s very simple, but one of the hardest things you can ever do.” Dent closed by asking each person to ponder what would really reduce harm and increase safety and thriving for everyone in our communities.

Have our efforts to punish people struggling with addiction achieved their intended results, or are the unintended consequences of disconnected families and unemployable citizens just too great?

I can’t speak for everyone in the room, but for me, it felt like a shift in our represented communities’ understanding. The dialogue that night was free of judgment and shame. Perhaps it was the beginning of healing and introspection for many. It seems to me, End It For Good is striving to end us kicking these cans down the road and ask what is truly best for our communities.

My professional experience, as well as research on addiction, confirms that the most successful path out of addiction often includes deep relationships, a sense of life purpose, and healing from trauma. We’ve spent many decades doing the opposite of that through incarceration.

To help more people exit addiction, we need to build communities where relationships, purpose, and healing are available to everyone. Not only will this help those currently experiencing addiction, it will also help prevent the next generation from going down that same harmful path. If not for ourselves, we need to consider changing our approach to addiction for the good of our kids and grandkids.

William Sansing, Ph.D., of Starkville has 25 years of experience as a disability policy advocate and substance use disorder professional. He is a therapist with the Oxford Treatment Center and the Starkville Wellness Group.