DEA Warns of Fentanyl “Mass-Overdose Events”

“Last year, the United States suffered more fentanyl-related deaths than gun-related and auto-related deaths combined.”

Photo by Colin Davis on Unsplash.

In life, as in society, there are always problems.

“There are no solutions, only tradeoffs,” as a wise man once said, and it’s true. The Law of Unintended Consequences is immutable and everything has consequences. Even doing the right thing has consequences; especially doing the right thing.

But in society, as in life, it is frequently the obstacles you don’t see that get you in the end. There are dozen old adages, and we could always add a few more: “It’s the stone you don’t see that trips you.”

In David Burr Gerard’s seminal work of fiction, “The Epiphany Machine”, a magical tattoo machine reveals every person’s major stumbling block by tattooing it on their forearms.

Even then, in fiction, as in life, we don’t see the truth- we don’t want to. We don’t see the threat, we don’t sense the real danger until it’s too late. For whatever reason, other things are distracting us.

While the saber-toothed tiger crouches in the bushes ready to pounce, we are concerned about getting the grass seed down before the spring rains really start in earnest.

When the walloping comes at last, when our two left feet hit that rake, which snaps up and knocks us into the ground face first, we are left as shocked from the shock as we are from the blow.

So while society has been grousing about who is to blame for the rising inflation and higher prices weighing so heavily on everyone’s mind, a leviathan lurks beneath the surface of our resentment and irritation.

There is one thing most politicians and elected officials spend almost no time talking about, but which impacts the lives of millions of Americans: America’s growing deadly drug crisis.

Crack cocaine had its heyday; methamphetamines have ruined many a promising life; America’s opioid crisis has been enough to make the heavens weep: Have we ever seen anything like fentanyl?

This new crisis, the new war on drugs, unlike the old war on drugs, isn’t a moral question as to whether or not people should or should not use drugs. It isn’t about whether or…