by Tommy Johnson and Katya Yindra
In a recent editorial, The Worker wrote that “When asked what he will do to help addicted Americans struggling to get treatment, Biden responded with: ‘More fentanyl machines, were able to detect drugs, more numbers of agents, more numbers of all the people at the border.” True to form, president Biden ignores the root cause of the problem and shifts the blame onto the Mexican people in order to create hysteria and jingoism to support the further reactionary militarization of the border.
To begin we must express that the largest commodity flowing illegally across the Mexico/US border is not drugs, but labor, and the class Biden represents is the one reaping profits off this labor, forcing desperate people into low paying jobs. Nearly 20% of the US workforce in 2023 was made up of immigrant workers, a record high according to the Economic Policy Institute. The militarization of the border is mainly to control the flow of this labor suitable to the economic demands of the capitalist ruling class.
It is telling that Biden’s failing mind went straight to bolstering the apparatuses of repression when asked about helping people with addiction. Repression does not help those addicted struggling to get treatment; the only measurable effect of increased repression is the corresponding increase in prison populations and a rise in the price of black market drugs. Fentanyl-detecting machines and border agents are completely useless to every drug treatment program. Having a son who allegedly struggles with addiction, one would expect at the very least some warm words about federally-funded treatment centers from the president, but the warmonger is not the capable salesman he used to be.
Imperialist politicians make their entire public-facing careers off of swindle. They are masters at superficial responses that avoid the root of the problem—because the root of the problem is the class system they represent.
The US is by far the world’s leading consumer of illicit drugs, with approximately 6% of its population using them. While drug addiction affects the wealthy and leaves victims in all social classes, the carnage is disproportionate. The 5 cities with the highest overdose deaths—Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Columbus, and Louisville—are all cities with large concentrations of low-income workers, high poverty and larger than average Black populations. None of Biden’s border rhetoric addresses the economic and social conditions of the masses in these cities.
The same poverty and decomposing conditions inflicted upon these cities are inflicted upon the Mexican people, but in an even worse manner. Capitalism on a world scale concentrates wealth into ever fewer hands, expanding poverty to the vast majority of the world’s people. This creates a flow from imperialist oppression abroad to misery at home. Drug addiction is first and foremost a political problem: the history of the drug market is tied to the problem of colonialism, and today these problems have reached an unbearable magnitude as they have developed under the conditions of imperialism.
In the US, more than a million people have died from overdose amidst the opioid crisis since 1968, with the overdose rate rapidly increasing. Capitalist greed and deceit masquerade as healthcare. In one of the clearest examples of this, Purdue Pharma, led by the billionaire Sackler family, aggressively marketed the opioid OxyContin as suitable for anything from sports injuries to post-operative pain while downplaying its addictive potential, aiming to expand its market beyond traditional uses like cancer pain relief. Despite early clinical trials revealing that OxyContin leads to withdrawal symptoms and intense cravings, the company continued to push the drug, generating over $30 billion in revenue at one pole and widespread addiction, death and misery at the other. Many who became addicted to prescription opioids turned to cheaper and more potent alternatives like heroin and fentanyl, further exacerbating the epidemic.
A recent Supreme Court decision rejected a settlement that would have distributed billions of dollars for treatment programs and compensation to victims of the opioid epidemic on the ground that it would have shielded the Sackler family from future lawsuits. This shows the absurdity of a legal system where the pursuit of financial relief for victims hinges on granting immunity to those responsible for their suffering—something seen in the recent court ruling on Boeing as well.
The only weapon the working class has is organization, and this holds true when it comes to combating addiction among the people. It is the fight against hopelessness and scarcity, the fight for power, which ends the calls of addiction. The old society is corrupt; we have to destroy it and create a new one.
The socialist revolution in China, under the great leadership of Chairman Mao, understood the historical development of Chinese conditions: how British colonialism forced opium and opium cultivation upon the Chinese masses, with devastating consequences for the people. The revolution replaced the desire to use the drug with revolutionary consciousness, hope, food, shelter, schools, jobs, and most importantly, political power. In about three years after seizing state power, opium addiction in the People’s Republic was eradicated. The Communist Party of China lead the mobilization of the masses to brandish the weapon of organization. Nothing of this great social spirit can be found in the ossified words of the criminal Joe Biden—he cannot offer hope, food, shelter, better schools, better jobs, nor a new society to the masses of Baltimore or any other suffering city. His promise of more repression is but the threats of the sinister dreams of imperialism, and not a solution at all.
Only the communists promise organization, which allows for power to be seized—ensuring a quality life for all and a new society. Addiction is a political problem—principally a problem of poverty, but also one of social alienation—which will increasingly worsen until the entire rotten system of exploitation and oppression is broken. In the meantime, we must warn the living, we must organize against these conditions, develop the forces of the class that can keep drugs out of working class areas, uplift the masses and offer them something better. Revolutionaries struggle tirelessly to raise the standards of living as part of the effort to reconstitute the Communist Party, which can and will lead the class and the masses to a future where misery and alienation are not present, along with the drugs and other harmful coping mechanisms that come with them.
