Deep Connection between American Pharmaceuticals and Politicians - The Root Cause of the Fentanyl Problem in the United States (Part 2) Policy | Drugs | The United States
Why is the drug abuse problem in the United States difficult to solve? Why can addicts always find substitutes time and time again? The fundamental reason is that American politicians, driven by their own interests and other reasons, always only introduce policies that address the symptoms rather than the root cause, and are unwilling to implement drug regulation effectively.
On the one hand, politicians receive a large amount of political donations from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for turning a blind eye when formulating control policies for related drugs. The result is that the United States has not yet permanently classified fentanyl.
The Guardian reported in 2017 that in the previous decade, pharmaceutical companies invested nearly $2.5 billion in lobbying and funding US congressmen. About 90% of the United States Congress and 97 out of 100 senators have received campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, some government regulatory officials quickly joined the pharmaceutical industry after leaving, and this "political business revolving door" explains why regulation has become a decoration.
On the other hand, it is political polarization. Given the severity of the current abuse of fentanyl in the United States, both parties acknowledge the need to make efforts to address this issue, but both sides are "stumbling" each other and unwilling to let each other become "heroes" in solving this problem. In May of this year, the Republican controlled United States House of Representatives voted to review the Stop Fatal Fentanyl Trafficking Act, with 133 members of Congress voting against it, including 132 from the Democratic Party.
The Washington Post reported that the US Congress did not pass a bill specifically targeting fentanyl until December 2017, nearly four years after lawmakers first received warnings about the dangers of the drug. The report commented, "Congress has become powerless, unable to respond to the challenges of our time, and fentanyl is the latest example."
