Is The US Forgetting About Human Rights? Politicians Want To Sterilize Drug Users And Send Them To Forced Labor Camps

By Joana Scopel via El Planteo

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 107,000 Americans died of a fatal drug overdose in 2021. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people.

Suggested Extreme Drug Policies

Faced with the overdose crisis, some politicians in the USA propose to address the issue by coercing drug users to sterilize themselves.

Other extreme measures that politicians have in mind are to lock them up in work camps, as well as to execute drug dealers.

The experts understand that the solutions proposed by some political figures violate human rights, and even the problem remains unresolved.

However, West Virginia state senator Randy Smith (R) recently said he wants to draft a bill that would give people convicted of drug offenses the option of sterilization to receive shorter prison sentences, reported Vice News. It's important to note that West Virginia has the highest fatal drug overdose rate in the United States, with 81.4 deaths per 100,000 people.

“If you get caught with drugs—and it’s all voluntary, you don’t have to—but if you want to lessen your prison sentence, if you’re a man, you can get a vasectomy so you can’t produce anymore,” said Smith, according to the Cumberland Times News.

“If you’re a woman, then you get your tubes tied, so you don’t bring any more drug babies into the system. Now, you don’t have to. If you don’t you’re going to jail for a very long time. If you volunteer for the program, then you get a lesser sentence,” he added.

And it keeps getting worse: Former President Donald Trump has said he wants the death penalty for anyone caught selling drugs, a position shared by US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

"If they are guilty, they are executed," said the former president.

Bordering On Nazism

Smith's move would be associated with the practice of eugenics. That is: control the human population by breeding “desirable” traits and eliminating those deemed undesirable, often based on prejudiced and racist assumptions.

And guess what regime was pushing eugenics, (using a very lax euphemism) “forced labor camps” and executions. Well yes, Nazism.

Although it sounds ridiculous, currently there is already a non-profit organization called "Project Prevention" that offers money to drug users to be sterilized. Government-funded sterilization programs have also targeted people with mental illness, poor people, people incarcerated, and people of color, according to VICE News.

Sheila Vakharia, deputy director of research and academic engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance said: “This is part of a broader trend for some people to say that certain people aren't worthy of becoming parents and that they could pass on, genetically or environmentally, certain traits that are undesirable,”

According to Vakharia, a eugenics-based solution assumes that people with addictions have problems that they can never overcome. Also, the fact that people who use drugs can be good parents is ignored, she added.

“A lot of politicians are grasping at straws and want to look like they're doing something, but also want to look like they're proposing new solutions,” she affirmed.

Accompany, Do Not Punish

According to a 2021 report from Northeastern University's "Health in Justice Action Lab," media coverage of such cases has led to spikes in overdoses because people are afraid to call authorities if they need help.

“Many people's analysis is that we’ve got to blame individual dealers, drug transporters, and distributors because that's what the problem is, rather than actually seeing that the reason why the drug supply is so unpredictable is because of broader social, structural, and policy factors, namely prohibition, which by its definition leads to an unregulated and adulterated drug supply,” Vakharia said.

Hiawatha Collins, community and capacity building manager at National Harm Reduction Coalition, said politicians ignore the fact that many drug dealers do it to support their own addictions. “Nobody's really making a whole lot of money and getting rich doing that,” Collins said.

“If people had jobs, if people had education, if people had good health care if people were able to pay their rent If he was able to pay their rent and keep food on the table—nobody wants to sell drugs,” Collins added.

Possible solutions?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently launched an initiative directing city employees, including police, to hospitalize mentally ill people who are out in public against their will, “even when there is no recent dangerous act,” according to state guidelines.

In addition, more than 1,250 homeless encampments were cleared in California between September 2021 and August 2022, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom's office. Edward Ring, a co-founder of the conservative think tank California Policy Center, said drug users “could be removed to regional camps set up in inexpensive parts of California’s urban counties.”

“To help earn their keep, they could participate in conservation projects and other character-building work, and recover their sobriety, their dignity, and eventually their freedom. The truly mentally ill would have to be placed, involuntarily, in psychiatric hospitals,” Ring concluded.

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