Should We Decriminalize Drugs in America? Sam Quinones Weighs In.
Sam Quinones is the author of the book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, published in 2015. In my humble opinion, without Sam’s book, we would not have consolidated our confront of our opioid epidemic and the architects of that disaster, the Sackler family, as soon as we have.
Sam has published a new book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. Yesterday, I listened to Sam talking about his new book with Ann Fisher on her podcast All Sides with Ann Fisher. He said:
“The idea of decriminalizing drugs actually might have worked in another era of our country and drug use. It may well have been something we absolutely should have tried in the marijuana era. The problem is that our ideas have remained the same and the drugs have rapidly changed. Decriminalizing drugs when the drugs are fentanyl and methamphetamine is a death sentence. It is not kindness. It’s not mercy. It is not compassion.”
Please remember this quote when you hear someone on their soapbox, going on about the necessity to decriminalize all drugs now.
(The photo above is from when I met my hero at a conference in Atlanta.)
