Make America Fentanyl Free? It’s Just the Same Failed Drug War

The War on Drugs, Rebranded and Futile

A new campaign promises to “Make America Fentanyl Free,” splashing fearsome ads across TV and social media in hopes of ending the overdose crisis. Its approach? The same old arsenal of the War on Drugs: scare tactics, tougher sentences, border crackdowns, and vows to hunt down cartel leaders. Former President Donald Trump even hailed a recent law imposing harsher penalties on fentanyl trafficking as a “historic step” toward justice. But there is nothing historic or new here – it’s a replay of a 50-year failure.

From Nixon’s 1971 drug war declaration to 1980s “Just Say No” campaigns to today’s fentanyl crackdowns, America has repeatedly tried to arrest and punish its way out of drug problems. And time after time, this punitive strategy has failed spectacularly.

Let’s call this campaign what it is: a futile continuation of the failed War on Drugs. Decades of “tough” deterrence did not stop the flow of drugs or the rise of addiction. Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of Americans for drugs has filled prisons and destroyed lives without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations.

We have spent over $1 trillion taxpayer dollars since 1971 on this war – and continue to burn about $47 billion every year on drug prohibition efforts – only to find drugs cheaper, stronger, and more accessible than ever. Indeed, fentanyl – the latest feared villain – is a byproduct of this failed war, flooding in to meet demand partly created by crackdowns on less-potent opioids. The bottom line is simple: doubling down on a proven failure won’t save lives. It will just perpetuate an expensive, destructive cycle.

Overdose Epidemic Proves Punishment Doesn’t Work

If the drug war model worked, American streets would be free of narcotics and our overdose rate would be near zero. The opposite is true. Today we face the worst drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history, even as enforcement is at its peak. In fact, over 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the past year – the highest annual death toll record. That grim number is higher than all U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined, happening every single year on our soil. These casualties cut across urban and rural communities, proving that no amount of crackdowns has shielded us from tragedy. Every day, families mourn sons, daughters, parents lost to preventable overdoses while politicians boast about “seizing a few more pounds” at the border or locking up more people.

 Overdose deaths in America have skyrocketed in the past decade, reaching unprecedented levels despite decades of drug criminalization. This chart shows the sharp rise in U.S. drug overdose fatalities from 1999 to 2022, peaking with the fentanyl-driven surge in recent years. The grim reality is that the War on Drugs did nothing to stem this tide of death. One in three Americans now knows someone who died of an overdose – a staggering indicator that this crisis touches everyone. Yet the “Make America Fentanyl Free” proponents want to respond with more of the same old playbook: fear and punishment. How can anyone believe that will work when every trend line – overdose rates, addiction rates, drug availability – tells us otherwise?

Let’s look at drug use itself. Despite thousands of raids and arrests, drug use has not declined in any meaningful way under the punitive regime. On the contrary, many drugs are as popular as ever. The U.S. government’s own data show that over 11.8 million Americans misused opioids in 2016, and millions more used other illicit drugs. Overall rates of illicit drug use today are on par with or higher than they were in the 1980s.

The War on Drugs did not eliminate demand – it merely drove people into hiding and made using drugs far more dangerous (as tainted fentanyl-laced supplies replace regulated ones). Even when specific drug use dips (for instance, prescription opioid misuse fell when pills became harder to get), a more lethal drug often takes its place (heroin, then fentanyl) in an endless cat-and-mouse game. The harsh truth is that threats of arrest and imprisonment have never been an effective deterrent to substance use. Addiction is stronger than fear of the law – a reality policymakers must finally acknowledge.

While failing to curb drug use or save lives, the drug war has succeeded at one thing: filling up prisons. And it has done so in a grossly inequitable way, devastating communities of color in the process. Drug criminalization in America has always been racially biased, from the crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing disparities of the 1980s to present-day enforcement patterns. Black and brown Americans have been targeted, arrested, and incarcerated at far higher rates, even though drug use rates are similar across races. African Americans and whites use drugs at comparable rates, yet the imprisonment rate of Black Americans for drug offenses is nearly six times that of whites. Black people make up only about 12–13% of U.S. drug users, but nearly 30% of all drug-related arrests.

Almost 80% of people serving time for federal drug offenses are Black or Latino. These disparities are no accident – they are the predictable outcome of decades of discriminatory policing and sentencing that treated communities of color as battlefields in the drug war.

The results have been catastrophic. An entire generation of Black and Latino men were swept into prisons during the past 40 years of aggressive drug enforcement. Since 1980, the number of people behind bars for drug offenses skyrocketed from 40,000 to over 500,000, an 1100% increase, disproportionately people of color. Neighborhoods were stripped of parents and young people, deepening cycles of poverty and trauma. As Congresswoman Cori Bush bluntly stated, “Growing up... the War on Drugs disappeared Black people, not drug use.” This human toll is the true legacy of the “tough on crime” approach: broken families and fractured communities, without any public health benefit to show for it. In fact, by driving a wedge of fear and distrust between vulnerable communities and authorities, the drug war likely worsened public health outcomes.

People using drugs are less likely to seek help or carry life-saving naloxone if they fear arrest. Families of color, already facing systemic inequities, have borne the brunt of a crusade that treated their loved ones as collateral damage. Any campaign that wants to “save lives” in the fentanyl crisis must reckon with this legacy of racial injustice – yet “Make America Fentanyl Free” offers only more of the same punitive dragnet.

Incarceration Is Not a Cure – It Fuels the Crisis

Perhaps the cruelest irony of the drug war is that incarceration does nothing to heal addiction – and often makes it more deadly. Prison is not rehab. Behind bars, effective treatment for substance use disorder is rare, but drugs do penetrate the prison walls. Thus, many incarcerated people continue to use in secret, often with more dangerous conditions and without support. It’s no surprise that deaths from drug or alcohol intoxication in U.S. prisons skyrocketed by over 600% between 2001 and 2018. Our jails and prisons are warehousing people with addiction but not curing them. Instead, individuals cycle in and out of custody with untreated substance use disorder, each time returning to their community with the same underlying illness and fewer life opportunities than before.

In fact, imprisonment dramatically increases the risk of overdose. Upon release, a person’s tolerance is lower, but if their addiction was never treated, they often return to use – and the results can be fatal. In the first two weeks after release from prison, people are a staggering 27 times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than the average person. In other words, for many, the most dangerous part of the drug war is getting out of jail. We’ve turned prisons into revolving doors that dump people back into society sicker and more vulnerable than before. This is what “deterrence” looks like in reality: not sobriety or safety, but death.

By any measure, incarceration has utterly failed as a strategy to deter drug use or protect public health. Crime rates didn’t plummet because we jailed drug users – studies find incarceration had a negligible effect on crime decline. And addiction rates certainly didn’t decline. How much more evidence do we need that we cannot arrest our way out of a public health emergency? Handcuffs and jail cells do not cure opioid use disorder; if anything, they worsen it. Continuing to rely on these tactics in the face of record overdose deaths is not just misguided – it’s malpractice.

Make America Treatment Rich: A New Path Forward

If “Make America Fentanyl Free” is the wrong prescription, what is the right one? The answer is to flip the script: Treat addiction as the public health challenge it truly is, not a moral failing to be punished. Instead of chasing an impossible drug-free fantasy, we should be working to Make America Treatment Rich. That means a country overflowing with accessible treatment options, compassionate care, and harm reduction services – a country that helps those struggling with addiction live rather than condemning them. This is not wishful thinking; it’s an evidence-based approach with a proven track record of success.

Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) – using FDA-approved medications like methadone and buprenorphine for opioid addiction – is a cornerstone of this approach. These medications calm withdrawal cravings and restore stability, allowing people to rebuild their lives. Mountains of research and on-the-ground experience show that MAT saves lives. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, MAT “decreases opioid use, opioid-related overdose deaths, criminal activity, and infectious disease transmission.” In clinical studies, being on methadone or buprenorphine cuts the risk of a fatal opioid overdose by 50% or more.

That is an enormous benefit – imagine if a new cancer drug halved the risk of death. We should be rushing to get these medications to everyone who needs them. Yet our current system makes MAT hard to access: in 2022, only 1 in 4 Americans with opioid use disorder received any medications for it. We have the tools to prevent tens of thousands of overdose deaths each year, but punitive ideology and stigma have stood in the way of scaling them up. A “treatment rich” America would tear down those barriers fast – expanding clinics, eliminating cumbersome regulations, and even offering medications in jails and prisons (places that, scandalously, often deny proven treatments to those in custody). It would mean treating opioid addiction with the same urgency and medical compassion as we treat heart disease or diabetes.

Harm reduction is the next pillar. This means practical strategies to keep people alive and healthy even if they are using drugs, with the ultimate goal of helping them into recovery when they are ready. It starts with naloxone – the overdose-reversal miracle that can revive someone from the brink of death. Making naloxone (Narcan) as common as fire extinguishers in public spaces should be a national priority. Already, equipping first responders with naloxone has saved countless lives; in New York City alone, first responders save 180 lives every month by administering naloxone to overdose victims.

We should have naloxone in every school, every workplace, every home medicine cabinet – no one should die simply because the antidote wasn’t on hand. Harm reduction also includes fentanyl test strips (so users can check drugs for deadly fentanyl), syringe exchange programs (to prevent HIV/hepatitis and connect people to services), and supervised consumption sites. These strategies have remarkable success records. For example, when Washington, DC opened syringe exchange programs, new HIV infections plummeted by 70% in two years.

And in Vancouver, Canada, a supervised injection facility led to a 35% drop in overdose fatalities in its neighborhood. Harm reduction isn’t about “encouraging” drug use – it’s about recognizing reality and saving lives. You can’t get someone into recovery if they’re dead. A “treatment rich” model values every life and meets people where they are, instead of writing them off as collateral damage in an unwinnable war.

Finally, a truly effective strategy must include decriminalization of low-level drug possession and robust social support. Decriminalization means people who use drugs are no longer treated as criminals for the act of possessing a substance for personal use. It does not mean legalization of drug sales, but it stops the practice of arresting and jailing people simply for using or having a drug. This policy change is crucial because it removes the fear of seeking help and ends the destructive cycle of incarceration for addiction. Instead of spending resources on cops kicking down doors to grab someone’s stash, we can spend those resources on outreach workers and counselors who offer help without handcuffs. Two-thirds of Americans already support eliminating criminal penalties for drug possession, favoring a health-centered approach instead.

Decriminalization would free up billions of dollars (currently wasted on enforcement) to invest in treatment, housing, and job programs that address the reasons people fall into addiction and struggle to escape it. It also directly reduces the harms of criminalization – no more young people getting life-ruining criminal records for a single pill or a gram of powder, no more scared users using alone (and overdosing alone) to avoid arrest. Instead, people would be encouraged to seek help, not hide in the shadows.

Portugal Proves a Health Approach Works

If anyone doubts this public health approach can work, just look at Portugal. Portugal undertook a bold experiment nearly 25 years ago: faced with a raging heroin epidemic, they decriminalized the possession of all drugs in 2001 and redirected their efforts toward treatment and support. The results have been nothing short of remarkable, providing a blueprint for the rest of the world. Critics warned that decriminalization would lead to rampant drug use and chaos, but that never happened. In fact, Portuguese drug use rates have remained consistently below the European average, especially among youth.

Drug use among teenagers actually declined after decriminalization – usage rates for 15-24 year olds dropped in the years following reform, and overall adult drug use in 2012 was lower than in 2001. So much for the fear of everyone suddenly doing drugs with impunity. By treating addiction as a health issue instead of a crime, Portugal managed to reduce the stigma and fear that drive the most dangerous drug behaviors.

Most importantly, Portugal saved lives. When it embraced a health-first model, overdose deaths and disease transmission plunged. In the late 1990s, Portugal was drowning in overdose fatalities – roughly one person died every day from drug overdose in a country of 10 million. After decriminalization and expansion of treatment, the drop was dramatic. By 2011, Portugal recorded only 10 overdose deaths in the entire year. Even with some increases since then, the numbers remain far below pre-reform levels. Today, Portugal’s drug mortality rate is one of the lowest in Europe – just 6 deaths per million adults, compared to an EU average of 23.7.

To put that in perspective, the United States is suffering around 300 drug deaths per million (given our 100,000+ annual toll) – a rate 50 times higher than Portugal’s. This is what a health approach can achieve. The Portuguese model also led to incredible public health victories: new HIV infections among people who inject drugs plummeted from 1,287 cases in 2001 to only 16 cases in 2019 thanks to widespread needle exchange, treatment access, and removing the fear of arrest.

Drug-related crime fell, and the percentage of people in Portuguese prisons for drug offenses dropped from over 40% in 2001 to about 15% today – meaning their prisons are no longer jammed with low-level drug offenders as ours are. Portugal proved that when you stop throwing people in cages and start helping them, society becomes healthier and safer. As the Global Commission on Drug Policy summed up: Portugal’s policies led to declines in heroin use, HIV infection, and incarceration, while emphasizing treatment over punishment. It is hard to imagine a more compelling rebuke to the drug war status quo.

We don’t have to cross the Atlantic for hope, either – change is brewing here at home. In 2020, Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize personal possession of all drugs, explicitly inspired by Portugal’s success. Other states are expanding access to MAT and harm reduction. These are steps in the right direction, but much more is needed, and fast. Overdose deaths are not waiting for slow, cautious reforms. We need a bold national shift. The truth is that every dollar spent on jail cells and drug squads is a dollar not spent on treatment beds, recovery coaches, and mental health services. Those misplaced priorities have cost us dearly. It’s time to reroute our immense resources into building a society where help is available on demand. Imagine if the billions poured into militarized drug interdiction were instead used to fund clinics, addiction research, and community programs to strengthen families. That is what a “Treatment Rich” America would look like – and it would finally break the cycle of despair.

 Americans are rising up to demand an end to the failed drug war and a new focus on saving lives. Across the country, activists, public health experts, and impacted families are calling on leaders to embrace sensible, humane policies: treatment instead of incarceration, compassion instead of punishment. The message on the placard in this image – “End the Drug War” – speaks for millions who know that our current path only leads to more sorrow. We must channel this grassroots energy into concrete change. The fentanyl crisis is urgent, but the answer is not a flashy ad campaign promising an impossible drug-free utopia. The answer is to invest in solutions that work – medication-assisted treatment, harm reduction, counseling, housing, and second chances for people who use drugs. It’s to decriminalize and destigmatize, so that those who need help can step forward without fear. It’s to recognize that every person lost to overdose is not a “bad criminal” we failed to catch in time, but a human being we failed to support in time.

A Call to Action: Fight for Rehabilitation, Not Punishment

We stand at a crossroads. Down one path, the country continues waging a futile war, cracking the whip harder in hopes that fear will succeed where it has always failed. Down the other, we finally lay down the weapons and extend a helping hand. How many more lives must we lose before we choose the right path?

It is time to end the War on Drugs once and for all – time to dismantle the punitive mindset that gave us mass incarceration and mass overdose, and replace it with a national commitment to healing. Policymakers must summon the courage to implement bold reforms: eliminate draconian drug laws, massively fund treatment and harm reduction, and center the voices of public health experts and people in recovery. And we, the public, must demand nothing less.

The “Make America Fentanyl Free” slogan is a false promise, a distraction that lures us back into a losing battle. Instead, let’s Make America Treatment Rich – an America where we tackle drug misuse the smart way, with science and compassion, and where we refuse to write off any more lives. We know what works. We have the evidence. Now we need the will. The war has failed; the health approach will not. Every overdose prevented, every life saved, every person helped onto their feet is a victory far more meaningful than any drug bust or harsh sentence. So let’s turn our anger and heartbreak into action.

Demand a public health response from our leaders. Support local harm reduction efforts. Speak out against policies that punish rather than help. The time for half measures and rhetoric is over – this is a fight for our families and communities. We can no longer tolerate policies that are literally killing our loved ones.

America has spent decades chasing the mirage of a drug-free society through force, and we have paid for that fantasy in blood and treasure. No more. It’s time to face reality and choose the path that leads to life. No campaign slogan can wish fentanyl away – but with a compassionate, treatment-focused strategy, we can stop the dying. We can heal instead of harm. We can save the people we love. It’s time to stop fighting a war against our own people, and start fighting for them.

Let’s stop trying to make America drug free – let’s make America free from the shackles of the failed drug war. The urgency cannot be overstated: lives are on the line, and the only humane and effective choice is to abandon the war and embrace a future of care. The hour is late, but change is still possible – if we demand it, fight for it, and never again allow fear and punishment to override truth and compassion. The call is clear: end the war, bring in the doctors and counselors, and let the healing begin.

The stakes are life and death, and we must choose life.

-SRG