© Ty Wright / The New York TimesA forensic drug analyst opens baggies contains various types of heroin which are being examined at the Hamilton County Coroners Crime Lab, in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 1, 2016. Some lawmakers have shifted their focus from prosecuting addicts to pursuing opiate dealers, some even going so far as to suggest the death penalty.
In April, former Attorney General Eric Holder told Frontline that the drug war "is over." Over the last part of his final term, President Obama has
echoed that refrain, granting clemency to hundreds of people incarcerated for drug offenses and emphasizing that the US has relied too much on the criminal punishment system to address drug-related problems.
The rhetoric of many lawmakers across the country has also swung toward a more "rehabilitation"-oriented approach, particularly in response to the recent rise in opiate overdose deaths. Even many
conservative politicians are arguing for treatment-based solutions. This is at least partly because most of those who've died in the recent spate of opiate deaths have been white.
However, the war on drugs is not over; it has simply shifted. And when it comes to opiates - the political arena's main drug focus right now - the shift is from prosecuting anyone who touches the drugs to a focus on aggressively prosecuting those accused of selling them. As one Ohio lawmaker
put it, increasingly, "Jail is for the traffickers, treatment is for the addicts." Of course, such statements ignore the fact that those two categories
often overlap, and that even people only convicted of possession still sometimes end up in prison. Still, it's those accused of selling drugs who are experiencing the brunt of the ramped-up penalties.
Comment: It may very well be that the above, and other stories, are being propagated to scare the average Brit back into EU fold - and also lay blame on Brexit for further economic downturns that have nothing to do with Brexit (and everything to do with economic mismanagement).
See this for instance: