Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

by Beth Macy

In the 1970s, America decided to deal with drug addiction and dependence as a crime problem rather than a health problem, “because it was popular to find a new community of people to criminalize,” Stevenson explained. “And everybody was preaching the politics of fear and anger.” As that narrative of addicts as criminals further embedded itself into the national psyche, the public became indifferent to an alternative response that could have eased treatment barriers, he said. As an example he cited Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, in 2001, adding housing, food, and job assistance—and now has the lowest drug-use rate in the European Union, along with significantly lowered rates of drug-related HIV and overdose deaths. In Portugal, the resources that were once devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts were funneled into treatment instead.