John Oliver discussed the many systemic problems that face Americans battling drug addiction and made a plea for rapid change.
The Last Week Tonight host spoke about the duality of using drugs, after showing a dated PSA. “Drugs can be a lot of fun, some in fact can be so much fun they ruin your fucking life,” he said.
There has been a substantial rise in overdose deaths, with 100,000 Americans dying in a recent 12-month period, which is three times the number of traffic accident deaths and twice as many as those killed by guns.
“Street drugs are an absolute mess right now,” he said in reference to the levels of fentanyl contamination in many other drugs,, which now accounts for two-thirds of overdose deaths.
But the US has been “fuelled by fear and misinformation, directly leading to bad policy”, going back to the so-called war on drugs, including “shitty and racist” media coverage of “crack babies”, a phenomenon that was later debunked.
There has also been a more recent and entirely false trope of law enforcement overdosing on fentanyl after merely touching it, something that was even used on Blue Bloods, “basically adult Paw Patrol”. Oliver called it “deeply irresponsible to keep perpetuating a medical impossibility” and said that “when you treat a drug like a bioweapon, you justify a punitive militarised response to it.”
It’s a way to avoid the real issue, he said, and it “makes more sense to protect those who are genuinely at risk of overdosing” through harm reduction, which “accepts the reality that people will use illegal drugs and some people can’t or don’t want to stop, so rather than arrest them we might be better off trying to mitigate the damage done”.
He spoke about the importance of clean needle programs and also testing drugs to find out what’s in them. But the latter is done via two valuable tools that thanks to drug war-era laws are technically illegal in many states. He called it “complete madness”.
There is also the importance of naloxone, which can prevent fentanyl overdose. Oliver called it “incredibly effective” and “a fucking miracle”, yet the FDA has it under prescription-only status.
There are also overdose prevention centres where people bring their own drugs and can use clean supplies. Professionals can then intervene if there’s trouble and provide addiction treatment if it’s wanted.
But although the centres provide a crucial service, “whenever they are floated as an option, people freak the fuck out”. He played a montage of Republicans and Fox News pundits criticising the centres, calling them a “heroin shooting gallery”.
Oliver pointed out that 30% of those who use the centres are more likely to enter into treatment and are 100% less likely to die.
He warned against punishing addicts into abstinence and called on the Biden administration to give overdose prevention centers “a full-throated endorsement”.
“Our ingrained stigmas around drugs and the people who use them run really deep,” he added. “We need to meet people where they are, help them transition into safe drug use to stay alive and remove barriers for those seeking addiction treatment.”
