Read the original press release from the US DoJ. It reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing the formation of the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, a new Department of Justice pilot program to utilize data to help combat the devastating opioid crisis that is ravaging families and communities across America.
The language of the press release is a bit sterile but Sessions’ speach adds some color and a touch of context.
This, of course, is Donald Trump‘s America and many of the people who voted him in to office are likely to be those most at risk of opioid abuse.
I am totally amazed at this response to the gathering opioid pandemic in the US. Fresh faced with my MBA, I was analyzing data looking for statistical abnormalities in my twenties, nearly fifty years ago, way before personal computers, in the days of massive mainframe computers with limited power by today’s standards.
I’ve also operated at executive level in both the public and private sectors. I seriously struggle to understand why the DoJ has not been analyzing this data routinely for years?
Drug overdose is now clearly the largest cause of death for the under fifties in the US, particularly in the lower educated and unskilled (typically those who voted for Trump). The Chair of the Fed has highlighted the US labor productivity problem because of drug abuse.
Most serious commentators speculate about the US opioid epidemic becoming a pandemic without serious policy interventions in the two core areas: (1) enforcement; and (2) rehabitilitation.
Let me ask an open question:
Massive funds are invested in the US military machine but why is Trump’s America not ready to stop the risk of an opioid pandemic?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
As far as I am aware no organised criminal gang including Chinese Triads, the three different Mafias, India’s O2, the Japanese Yakusa, Yardies, Columbian Cocaine dealers has access to large container ships and cargo planes, so the question is who does?
Dr Alf wonders why the American Government have not been keeping track of the figures?
The Bureau of Alchohol Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, all keep figures and have armies of Dr Alf’s to do the number crunching, so the figures are available.
A look at the geography is instructive, as is the history.
Drugs from Afghanistan have increased in quantity twelve-fold since the toppling of the Taliban, in 2001, and AI and technological development is going to eliminate 50% of American jobs by 2033. Perhaps this is coincidence?
I tend to think that getting people to poison themselves with drugs is a way to ensure that their jobs, if they have one, can be eliminated, thus doing away with any necessity to retrain people or create jobs.
A war will eliminate more people and generate money for its funders, and with Donald Trump pressing his generals to say that Iran is not complying with their nuclear agreement we can see the seeds of confrontation apart from sanctions on Russia and sabre rattling in the South China Sea.
We know from HSBC that drug money is in the banking system to the point where some financial institutions cannot do without it.
Whether the will is there to stop the flow of opiates is therefore questionable as can be seen by comparing the Singaporean approach to drug dealing with the one in America.