We don’t have a drug crisis. It just doesn’t exist.

We have a trauma crisis which goes utterly unaddressed by policy makers, arising out of food insecurity, housing insecurity, massive economic inequality and lack of sufficient social safety nets.

This trauma, when left unaddressed, drives people to self-anesthetize said trauma with anything readily available… and with said “toxic drugs” simply being the most effective and efficient at that job.

Drugs are a symptom, not a cause, of our problems. You don’t band-aid a symptom unless you are perfectly fine with letting the problem get only worse. You leverage a symptom to identify and heal the underlying cause, because that is how problems get solved. Solve the problem, and the symptoms vanish.

It’s not the chemicals, it’s your cage.