Heroin, survivor of War on Drugs, returns with new face

President Richard M. Nixon announced his war on drugs in 1971, and threw a good deal of federal money into it
The New York Times (US)
Sunday, November 22, 2015

nixonUnited States military operations in Afghanistan, now in their 15th year, are routinely described as America’s longest war. For overseas combat, that is true. But nothing tops the domestic "war on drugs" that an American president declared more than four decades ago. The casualty rate has been exceedingly high. Nearly 44,000 Americans a year — 120 a day — now die of drug overdoses. Neither traffic accidents nor gun violence, each claiming 30,000-plus lives a year, causes so much ruination. The annual drug toll is six times the total of American deaths in all wars since Vietnam.