CounterSpin interview with Maritza Perez Medina on fentanyl.
Janine Jackson interviewed Drug Policy Alliance’s Maritza Perez Medina about fentanyl for the February 17, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: When it comes to drugs—that is to say, when it comes to drugs whose use by some people in some contexts is officially deemed illicit—to suggest any other approach than criminalization is to be told you aren’t “taking the issue seriously.” That any response not involving jail, prison, loss of livelihood, family separation, is widely deemed, essentially, a non-response is indication of an impoverished state of conversation.
But is that changing? Some pushback to the White House policy addressing fentanyl suggests that there is space for a new way to talk about drugs, and harm, and ways forward.
Maritza Perez Medina is the director of the Office of Federal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. They’re online at DrugPolicy.org. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Maritza Perez Medina.
Maritza Perez Medina: Thank you so much.
JJ: What, first of all, does current policy with regard to fentanyl look like? It seems like states—and I know you look at federal affairs—are rushing to do something, but the things that they’re doing are not necessarily well-grounded, or based in understanding of what we know works.
How would you describe the current state of play with regard to policy here?
MPM: Unfortunately, I think at the moment we’re experiencing a lot of media sensationalism, but also sensationalism coming from lawmakers, around fentanyl, rather than thinking about policy solutions that are based on public health, because when we’re talking about overdose deaths, and overdose deaths related to illicit fentanyl, we’re really talking about a public health issue that requires a public health response.
We know from decades of research that the criminal legal system and a punitive enforcement strategy does not help people who use drugs, does not save lives, and certainly does not reduce the drug supply.
If anything, it can lead to a more dangerous drug supply.
JJ: That seems important to go on, because I think to the extent that folks who aren’t experiencing it personally in their lives, what they get from news media is, first of all, that weird round of coverage of police officers apparently being laid out on the street from just touching fentanyl, which was debunked, or at least explored, subsequently by media.
But it’s really sensationalist scare tactics, or it’s genuinely hard stories about people who have lost loved ones to overdose, but it’s not necessarily a public health conversation, or even a research-based policy conversation. It’s very much scare tactics and heartstrings, in a way that doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do about it.
MPM: Yeah, and I think those narratives are harmful. For one, the myths that we’re seeing around fentanyl are not helpful, because it’s essentially just creating more stigma around people who use drugs.
And we know that that stigma essentially is going to harm people, especially people who may have used fentanyl, because they’re going to be reluctant to want to call for help if they need it.
Folks are going to be reluctant to want to call for help if they witness an overdose, because of potential law enforcement involvement.
Or people might even think that, if they help someone who’s overdosing, they themselves will be exposed to fentanyl, which is not true. Rather than perpetuating these myths, we should really be having a conversation that’s grounded in public health education and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is fentanyl is in the illicit street supply. We need to make sure that people who use drugs are armed with information that will keep them safe and that will keep them alive.
So people should have access to things like drug-checking tools, so they can check their drugs for fentanyl. They should have access to harm reduction tools like clean needles, things like Naloxone that can help reverse the effects of an overdose.
These are real tools that we know save lives and keep people healthy. Unfortunately, a lot of the myths that we’re seeing perpetuated in the media, and even by lawmakers, are really not helpful to keeping people safe.
JJ: Did the State of the Union change anything for you? What did Biden’s remarks suggest to you about what might happen at the federal level, and what we might expect to be repercussions of that?
MPM: On one hand, I acknowledge that the Biden administration has really embraced harm reduction, and even says “harm reduction” out loud. So they’re the first administration to really do that, and to be supportive of those efforts. So I think that’s great. It’s outstanding. I give them a lot of credit for doing that, and for really acknowledging that drug use is a public health issue, and we need to meet people where they’re at.
But on the flip side of that, during the State of the Union, I heard a lot of talk about supply-side interdiction, and we know that prohibition and supply-side interdiction have done nothing to quell the supply of illicit fentanyl. If anything, those tactics have made it so that we have a dangerous illicit supply of drugs in the US.
This is the fourth wave of the opioid overdose crisis, and it’s been driven because of law enforcement tactics criminalizing various substances, which means that people move on to another substance that they can find more easily.
My fear is that if we keep focused on supply-side interdiction, we know from 50 years of failed drug war that that strategy doesn’t work, that we will see new substances emerge, and that the public health issue will remain, which is why we really need to focus on a public health response.
We need to make sure that people who use drugs are using drugs safely and are staying alive, and that we empower people with education around drugs.
JJ: Are there particular policies at a state or federal level, either that are drafted and ready to be acted on, or that you think could be created tomorrow, that would actually change things? Are there particular policies in the works, or that we might think about?
MPM: So I think the most concerning policy at the federal level, and it’s concerning because usually what happens at the federal level is mimicked by localities in different states, but there has been an effort over the last few years to criminalize fentanyl-related substances, and schedule them as schedule one drugs, without fully testing these substances.
And that is really concerning because it’s a criminalization approach to this issue, which we know is really a public health problem, but it would impose new mandatory minimums on people who are caught with fentanyl-related substances, and we know that people who sell drugs and people who use drugs are often the same person. I think lawmakers like to pretend that we’re talking about two different populations, but often they’re one and the same.
And we know that criminalization is not going to give people the support they need to end problematic drug use. So the criminalization approach doesn’t make sense for that purpose.
Rather, I think Congress should embrace public health alternatives, and there are a number of bills in Congress that would support harm-reduction services, health services for people who use drugs, would support things like education, so that people have knowledge related to drugs. We think that those bills should be ones that lawmakers move in Congress.
But unfortunately, just because criminalizing things continues to be incredibly popular with some politicians, it’s been hard for them to drop that notion, and instead really, truly embrace the science and public health.
But we’re trying to explain to them the potential ramifications of continuing to choose criminalization versus public health.
JJ: Finally, I have to say, I was struck by Associated Press’s piece about the State of the Union and fentanyl in particular; it was called “Biden’s Fentanyl Position Sparks Criticism From Two Sides,” but it led with harm reduction advocates who, as it put it, think a call for “strong criminal penalties” is the wrong way to go about it.
It started with that, and it actually gave voice to that perspective ahead of, at least semantically, the people who were hollering about border policies. And that was kind of—after I turned off the cynic in me that was like, where was this when we were talking about crack cocaine?—but still, the idea of harm reduction advocates taking the lead in a news article about a drug was something a little bit new for me.
And I just wonder if you see anything shifting in media coverage of these issues, or if there is something in particular you would like to push reporters to do when it comes to this.
MPM: I think any issues, actually, related to drugs and crime, I think it’s really important for reporters to look at the facts, and not continue to perpetuate what they think will drive clicks.
I think oftentimes, unfortunately, news is driven by clicks, but when we’re talking about drug use, specifically, that could be really, really harmful. We don’t want to push people away from seeking help if they need it, and especially when we’re looking at a drug supply like we have today that is incredibly dangerous, if anything, we want to encourage people to seek out health services.
So just making sure that we’re not using stigmatizing language, [or] supporting criminalization publicly, is really important in order to save lives.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Maritza Perez Medina, director of the Office of Federal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. You can find their work online at DrugPolicy.org. Maritza Perez Medina, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MPM: Thank you so much.