Making the Case, Once Again, That the Opioid Crisis Is a Product of Drug Prohibition, Not Doctors Prescribing to Patients

Martha Bebinger reports for National Public Radio station WBUR about the rise in fentanyl‐​laced cocaine. She cites numerous accounts of college students using cocaine to stay awake while studying for exams, or while attending campus parties, and then falling into a deep sleep after the initial cocaine rush. Some don’t wake up. Others get revived by the opioid overdose antidote naloxone.


Massachusetts state police recorded a nearly three‐​fold increase in seizures of cocaine laced with fentanyl over the past year. And the Drug Enforcement Administration lists Massachusetts among the top three states in the US for seizures of cocaine/​fentanyl combinations. The DEA says the mixture is popularly used for “speedballing.” The original recipe used heroin mixed with cocaine in order to minimize the negative effects of the “come‐​down” after the rush of cocaine. Cocaine mixed with heroin is very unpredictable and dangerous. When it is mixed with fentanyl—five times the potency of heroin—it is even more dangerous.


There is a debate among law enforcement as to whether the cocaine is accidentally laced with fentanyl by sloppy underground drug manufacturers, or whether the mixture is intentional. There have been several reports of cocaine users who were unaware that the cocaine they were snorting or smoking contained fentanyl.


Connecticut state health statisticians keep track of opioid overdoses that included cocaine. While the majority of the time the overdose is from the classic “speedball” combination of heroin and cocaine, they have noted a 420 percent increase in fentanyl/​cocaine in the last 3 years. However, Massachusetts does not register drug combinations when it records “opioid overdoses,” so it is unknown just what percentage of the 1,977 estimated opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts last year were in combination with cocaine or other drugs. New York City keeps detailed statistics. In 2016, cocaine was found in 46 percent of the city’s opioid deaths, heroin and fentanyl were involved in 72 percent of opioid overdose deaths, and 97 percent of all opioid overdose deaths involved multiple drugs.


Meanwhile, President Trump and most state and local policymakers remain stuck on the misguided notion that the way to stem the overdose rate is to clamp down on the number and dose of opioids that doctors can prescribe to their patients in pain, and to curtail opioid production by the nation’s pharmaceutical manufacturers. And while patients are made to suffer needlessly as doctors, fearing a visit from a DEA agent, are cutting them off from relief, the overdose rate continues to climb.


The overdose crisis has always primarily been a product of drug prohibition—not of doctors treating patients.