When the celebrated Iranian artist Khosrow Hassanzadeh died of methanol poisoning this month, everyone but his country's most ardent theocrats recognized that prohibition was the problem. Yet when the Biden administration unveiled its plan to address the "emerging threat" of fentanyl mixed with the animal tranquilizer xylazine last week, it claimed prohibition was the solution.
In reality, these two hazards are manifestations of the same familiar phenomenon. When governments try to stop people from consuming politically disfavored intoxicants, they make consumption of those substances more dangerous by creating a black market in which purity and potency are highly variable and unpredictable.
