Pulling one liners from a swampy fishbowl containing all the washed up verbiage lawmakers have used over the past four decades to wax political about the nation’s drug problem, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin told CNN on Tuesday that it was necessary for the United States to “declare a War on Drugs” in order to put an end to the opioid epidemic.
Manchin’s dimwitted response came after he was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper what President–elect Donald Trump should do the control the opioid epidemic.
“We need to declare a War on Drugs,” Manchin said, going on to explain his experience with drug addicts.
Most of them, he said, “started out as a kid, you know, smoking occasional recreational marijuana and then that led in to prescriptions taken out of their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinet and become a ‘cool kid’ and before you know it, it turned into where they just were hooked.”
It is interesting that we still have politicians out there grinding the axe behind what President Nixon declared in the 1970s to be the War on Drugs.
Especially, since it has been revealed that this so-called war had absolutely nothing to do with preventing the American citizens from getting addicted to drugs, but rather it was a mostly racist ploy to give the federal government a reason to kick the asses of hippies and blacks.
Former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman confirmed this with Harper’s earlier this year.
Truth be told, the only thing the War on Drugs has done to this nation over the years is lead to the rampant incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, break up families and create a variety of vile, unnecessary hardships for those people searching for the American dream.
Since Nixon launched the drug war, which is now mostly ridiculed, it has since been revealed that marijuana is not the pathway to addiction that U.S. citizens were once forced to believe.
In fact, even the federal government admits these days that marijuana is not a gateway to harder drugs.
Over the summer, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, speaking to on behalf of President Obama during National Prescription Opioid and Heroin Epidemic Awareness Week, told a group of students from Kentucky that the consumption of marijuana did not lead to heroin addiction—but it is prescription drugs that are actually the culprit.
“When we talk about heroin addiction, we unusually, as we have mentioned, are talking about individuals that started out with a prescription drug problem, and then because they need more and more, they turn to heroin. It isn’t so much that marijuana is the step right before using prescription drugs or opioids,” Lynch said.
Interestingly, but not at all surprising, Manchin failed to blame the real cause of the nation’s opioid problem—the federal government’s lusty affair with the pharmaceutical companies.
In fact, Manchin’s daughter is CEO of Mylan, a drug manufacturer that generates profits through the sale of opioid medications. (Editor’s Note: For anyone who experiences severe allergic reactions, Mylan was the company that hiked prices of EpiPens from $57 each in 2007 to $600 for a double package in 2016; although, amidst major backlash, the company has since released a generic version for $300.)
The company has contributed around $180,000 to Machin’s campaign since 2011, CNN reports.
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