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  • 125 Overdose Deaths a Day

    125 Overdose Deaths a Day

    It makes homicide — which kills “just” 40 Americans a day — look positively benign.

    47,000 Americas died from drug overdose in 2014. That’s a shocking figure. 47,000 is the number of US soldiers who died in Vietnam combat. And that was over 20 years.

    Heroin deaths have shot up since 2010:

    From the Times:

    The death rate from drug overdoses is climbing at a much faster pace than other causes of death, jumping to an average of 15 per 100,000 in 2014 from nine per 100,000 in 2003.

    …

    Nationally, opioids were involved in more than 61 percent of deaths from overdoses in 2014. [Only 61%? I’m actually surprised it’s that low.] Deaths from heroin overdoses have more than tripled since 2010 and are double the rate of deaths from cocaine.

    From CNN:

    The biggest increase in deaths was from from synthetic opioids, which went up 80%. According to the CDC, the increase in synthetic opioid deaths coincided with increased reports by law enforcement of illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

    …

    The states with the highest rates of overdose were West Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio.

    Since 2000, opioid drug overdose deaths rose 200%. Nearly half a million lives have been lost to opioid drug overdoses since then.

    Maybe we could look at a country that has come very close (knock on wood) to solving this problem? There are about 100 overdose deathsin the Netherlands. 16.8 million people. That’s a rate of 0.6. Yeah: zero-point-six. Put another way, if the Netherlands were the size of the US, there would be about 2,000 overdose deaths. So what do they do in the Netherlands? Give that shit away for free, literally.

    Or maybe we should just take out another kingpin or two. That always seems to work.

  • We Got Another Kingpin! (15)

    It’s amazing there are any drug kingpins left since we’ve gotten so many of them.

    It seems there was one last to get: “La Tuta.” Now he’s history. (I’m a bit disappointed in the monicker. “The teacher” is a pretty lame nickname by drug lord standards, I have to say. We may not be running out of kingpins, but they may be running out of good nicknames.)

    “The most wanted drug lord in the country,” according to the NYT.

    I guess Mexico is now safe. Surely this marks the end of the drug war. What a relief.

  • We Got Another Kingpin! (14)

    It’s been a few months, and actually “we” didn’t get him. But he was gotten all the same.

    From the BBC: “Mexican police have found the body of Aquiles Gomez, who was thought to be one of the main leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel.”

    We win! (for the fourteenth time and counting…)

    As I wrote back in 2011:

    Ah, the illusive search for “Mr. Kingpin.” If only we could nab him, the whole criminal enterprise would tumble. Witness how we’re all safe from terrorism after the killing of Osama bin Laden. And notice how the drug war in Mexico has been won…

  • We Got Another Kingpin! (12)

    That’s two in one month and it makes an even dozen.

    “Eduardo Arellano Felix is to serve 15 years in jail, after pleading guilty to charges of money laundering,” says the BBC. Though I don’t know if this should really count since he’s been in jail since 2008, and his nickname, “The Doctor,” is kinda lame. But I’m still chalking him up because, well, he was a kingpin (or at least the accountant for one).

    Check out the others.

    Eduardo was the last of four brothers who ran the Mexican drug cartel known as the Arellano-Felix Organization. With all these kingpins gone, we can look back to the turning point in the drug war. Though today it’s hard to conceive of how violent Mexico once was, back before we won the war on drugs.

  • We Got Another Kingpin! (11)

    Why it was less than a year ago that we got Heriberto Lazcano, the founder and principal leader of the Zetas. And now the Times reports:

    The leader of … the Zetas, was captured Monday in a city near the Texas border, an emphatic retort from the new government to questions over whether it would go after top organized crime leaders.

    …

    Mr. Treviño is the highest-ranking and most-sought-after drug capo arrested by the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, whose aides had questioned the so-called kingpin strategy of his predecessor, which had emphasized high-profile arrests. 

    If you’re counting, and I am, this is the 11th Kingpinwe’ve captured in less than three years! Start the chant: War on drugs! War on Drugs! USA! Mexico!

    The BBC mentions in passing: “The fear is that it will lead to a period of violent in-fighting between different Zeta factions as they try to assume control of the criminal organisation, our correspondent adds.” Ya think?

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