Gen Z Views on Drugs Create Roadblocks In Police Recruiting
Drugs have never killed so many Americans. Can we get serious about drug enforcement again?
One of the challenges of recruiting Generation Z officers, is their attitudes on drug liberalization and legalization. The philosophy is rooted in their live-and-let-live ethos. Drugs were part of modern American culture in the postwar Boomer Generation. Back then dope was reckless, romantic, and rebellious. Today, it’s very ordinary.
The drugs my friends use
For most of the lives of Gen Z, there has either been legalization or proposed legalization. Everyone knows someone who has an ailment being treated by CBD. These attitudes make it challenging to recruit someone to a career that includes arresting people for drug possession who they consider are no more guilty than their friends and family.
There is a popular lie that simple possession drives racist mass incarceration. The facts and data tell another story. Even when President Biden “…pardons federal convictions for simple marijuana possession offenses.The proclamation applies only to federal convictions, including D.C. Code offenses.” The Hill reports: “Yet, despite this congratulatory brouhaha, there remains an inconvenient truth: None of the 6,557 Americans identified by the U.S. Sentencing Commission as being eligible for presidential pardons have received them.”
If you thought this would be beneficial to millions of Americans, or even several hundred thousand, this is the scope and scale of the deception.
The current presidential administration is touting flattening the rise of overdose deaths but the data is flat at the all-time high. In 2022, 107,081 Americans died from overdose with 68% dying from Fentanyl, with precursors from foreign shores and crossing our border unchecked.
“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered. Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison. We must take every opportunity to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related overdose death and poisonings from claiming scores of American lives every day.”
- DEA Administrator Anne Milgram
Gen Z deserves to learn the context
The vernacular of Gen Z is an indicator of their understanding of the issue of drugs and addiction in our culture. “I have to hit the drive thru of Starbucks every morning to get my $7 drink there. I’m obsessed with them. They’re like crack. I’m addicted and can’t help myself.”
I’m sincere that I believe that Gen Z will eventually transform policing. We must update their viewpoint on drugs and the destruction they are causing in our culture. It was more impactful to families and first responders in the early 90s when crack cocaine addiction caused people to abandon their families, their dignity, virtue, and self-respect. Addicts squatted in squalor, wasting away living off their high and vending machine honey buns. Today, we see overdoses kill people in seconds, and they are gone just as quickly, while in the past we had to witness the sad devastating process.
Where’s the outrage?
Here’s the problem: Americans are dying from Fentanyl and don’t even know they are taking Fentanyl. Every 20 days we lose more Americans than we lost in Pearl Harbor and September 11 attacks combined yet we take limited or no action.
Consider our response in 1941, knowing that a coalition of foreign powers, conspired to take 2,403 American lives on a single day. We declared it a day of infamy and declared war on the Axis powers, changing the world forever, eventually celebrating victory. On September 14, 2001, President George W. Bush promised retribution in National Cathedral for the 2,944 lives lost on 9/11, and we committed to another expeditionary war that only ended recently.
We would never tolerate an act of war by a foreign power that takes 6,000 American lives every three weeks without retaliation. Especially if it is a known offender.
There is no shortage of people who cry against the ‘war on drugs’ who have no concept of shipping containers being seized in Miami, where for every one there were seven who passed through. The cartels in Colombia were pushing cocaine while Mexico was emerging as an organized cartel system pushing cannabis across the border.
Today, Communist China is furnishing all the precursor necessary to keep productive Fentanyl labs operating in Mexico. Mexican cartels use established supply lines crossing the US southern border. Fentanyl adulterates every drug in the country and our death toll keeps rising as people taking illegal drugs have no idea they were given fatal doses.
Our recruiting challenge
Attitudes accepting drug liberalization are a barrier to Gen Z making an initial consideration toward a career in law enforcement. Our most intelligent young people are rightfully averse to choosing a career of oppressing people by enforcing bad and discriminatory laws.
We absolutely need all of the talents and gifts that Gen Z offers. All they need is the truth to see through all of the false narratives and become our next generation of public safety professionals.
Local law enforcement and self initiated activity are catching these poison peddlers and keeping their junk off the street. We need a new generation to do the same.
Please keep all of our first responders in your prayers!
References
https://www.dea.gov/fentanylawareness
“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered. Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison. We must take every opportunity to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related overdose death and poisonings from claiming scores of American lives every day.” - DEA Administrator Anne Milgram
“After years of tragic and rapid increases in the overdose death rate, we are encouraged to see progress in flattening this trend,” said Dr. Gupta. “This data is an important marker for our nation as we work to build on this progress and save even more lives. Flattening the growth is just the beginning – and now more than ever is the time to double and triple down on our efforts.
On October 6, 2022, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation that pardons federal convictions for simple marijuana possession offenses. The proclamation applies only to federal convictions, including D.C. Code offenses.
This is one of the most thought provoking and impactful articles I have ever read. In particular, the resounding truth of the below statement.
“It was more impactful to families and first responders in the early 90s when crack cocaine addiction caused people to abandon their families, their dignity, virtue, and self-respect. Addicts squatted in squalor, wasting away living off their high and vending machine honey buns. Today, we see overdoses kill people in seconds, and they are gone just as quickly, while in the past we had to witness the sad devastating process.”
If only our leaders that have the power to stop this could get out of their own way with the misdirection they pour out on a daily basis, lives could be saved.
In one generation, American Leadership has faltered to not only avoiding the issue but making the issue happen with our allegiance to China (who imports fentanyl) and an open border (where it’s brought in).
It seems like an eternity when 99% of Congress including the entire Black Caucus voted for the 1994 Crime Bill, motivated by thousands of African Americans dying from the violent effects of crack cocaine. To not act then would have been ignoring the extreme suffering of so many in our urban communities and clearly racist for not helping.
My interactions with Gen Z have suggested to me that they want legalized weed and other more “organic” drugs like DMT and mushrooms. I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint to an extent. These drugs have shown some medicinal properties.
The problem is, that more reasonable stance on drug legalization has a difficult time separating itself from the hard drugs that are wiping out thousands of people every week.
It’s even harder for Gen Z and others to see that the nice guy selling weed down the hall is contributing in his own small way to a horrifying epidemic of drug deaths from the harder stuff.