Behind the killer drug crisis: the capitalism of mafias

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to news article, “Overdose Deaths Continue Rising, With Fentanyl and Meth Key Culprits,” May 11, 2022:

More than half a century after the war on drugs was first declared by President Nixon, and with the enormous rise in imprisonment and official violence to solve most social problems, placing poor black kids on a school-to-prison pipeline, real social problems caused by drugs, including huge numbers of avoidable deaths, surely reveal that all along our state and federal governments were pursuing the wrong answer. Our governments should act to protect drug users from overdosing and dying, and limit prosecution to the major suppliers, who as always are the drug mafias.

What is the problem with doing that? It is that the mafias are an integral part of contemporary capitalism. Their businesses are well-integrated with “legitimate” businesses and banking. Indeed, big business is sustained partly by official violence, or the representation of its possibility, through military and police forces, which are increasingly amalgamated or indiscernible, both abroad and domestically. In some cases, it is sustained mainly by the direct use of violence, or possibility of using it, by businesses themselves. While these businesses are criminal enterprises, their functioning outside the law doesn't make them any less the business enterprises that they are. Enforcement of property rights and claims is integral to modern business, be it via the government's policing of the whole business society and system, or through more unscrupulous and direct means. Some businesses that thrive in ways that require tolerating many deaths; as with gun and armaments, so with drugs.