University:
University of Wyoming
Course:
POLS4445 | Drug War Geopolitics in the Americas
Academic year:

2023
Views:

369

Pages:

1
Author:

Allison B.

This week’s readings all centered around the topics of substance abuse/addiction and the conceptions we as a society have formed on those who use substances, and how these preconceived notions influence the criminal justice system/policy. Courtwright’s reading pertained exactly to this topic, discussion at length how our society is entrenched in negative stereotypes about people who use substances or experience abuse/addiction. Courwright also mentions “limbic capitalism”, which is defined as a capitalistic, advanced, society that still has a socially repressive business system where different cooperations “... often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organizations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction” (Courwright 6), i.e., the United States with its profitable pharmaceutical companies and even private prison systems that provide monetary incentives for addiction and other charges. Deweerdt specifically discusses the 2015 Opioid Crisis, with the death rate from opioids in the US more than tripling and opioid overdoses rates increasing six times between 1999 and 2017. (Deweerdt 1) The portion of the article pertaining to OxyCotin was interesting to me, a ditional to the drug’s impact in the US, how triplicate states and stricter policies in the US has forced Mundipharma International (Purdue’s international company) to look to international markets ranging from states like Australia to Latin American countries Brazil, Columbia, and Mexico. Regarding this, Deweerdt states: “these countries could be vulnerable … governments [could] come to serve the interests of the agents that they are meant to regulate.” (Deweerdt 3) Hart further discusses instant-substance-addiction as a societal phenomenon more than a medically proved concern, he makes an argument that if everyone who used substances was addicted society would fall apart. Hart also discusses substances from a viewpoint separated from stigmas, purely as substances and how they impact lives.