Opioid crackdown will invigorate black-market drugs

In 1973, President Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency to stop the importation and use of illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine, marijuana, etc. Since that time, these drugs have become easier to get, purer and cheaper. Illegal drug trafficking in the United States is greater than ever — the great federal bureaucracy called the DEA has failed to do its job.

So what does an incompetent agency do? Now it goes after the legal users of opioids. It goes after the doctors who prescribe pain medication for their patients who are suffering intractable, chronic severe pain.

I predict that sometime in the next year, the DEA will come out with a public relations announcement about how it has reduced the use of opioid drugs by 30 percent to 40 percent — with no mention that the reduction was all from legal prescription opioid medications.

What will be the unintentional result of this campaign by the DEA? It will greatly increase the demand for illegal painkilling drugs and make the illegal trade in these drugs even more profitable.

This response by the DEA is typical of a incompetent federal agency that cannot do its job and simply wants to expand its size and regulate more and more of what the public desperately needs.