While the Trump administration has no interest in even addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, his Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is offering up an equally feckless response to drugs in America: Just don’t do it. Last week, in a typically Trumpian collaboration, the DEA, Miss America 2020 Camille Schrier, and the United States Postal Service Trump has pretty much tried to destroy, announced a new “forever” stamp promoting a “Drug Free USA.”
“With this powerful image and message, the U.S. Postal Service has given us another means to promote the battle against drug abuse,” Acting Administrator of the DEA Timothy Shea said in a press release. “In America alone, 70,000 lives are lost to drug overdoses every year, with countless others impacted by the actions of violent drug traffickers and the scourge of illegal drug use.”
There’s hardly anything to say here, other than a reminder to Outlaw Report readers (who likely don’t need this reminder) that abstinence has been a severely unsuccessful way to curb drug use. Not to mention, a “drug-free” country is an impossibility. Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance Maritza Perez summed it best when she spoke to Marijuana Moment.
“Rather than focus on ‘drug-free’ initiatives, our government should be focused on providing harm reduction services and treatment for people who use drugs…We are facing an overdose epidemic made increasingly deadly due to the pandemic, but the DEA is selling stamps. Unconscionable,” she said. “Further, with an election just days away, people are depending on the USPS to ensure their ballots are delivered, not to waste precious time and resources memorializing a failed drug war that has caused nothing but pain to the same people that could be most disenfranchised during the electoral process.”
