According to the recent numbers from the Center for Disease Control(CDC), for the first time in the many years since the crisis began, the yearly opioid related death rate in the US has finally started to decrease instead of increase-from 84,181 deaths in 2022, to 81,083 in 2023. Yet, these numbers still represent a staggering amount of dead proletarians caught in the impersonal steamroller of a developing market. What has been called the "opioid crisis" has been ravaging working class families for over two decades, accumulating in the deaths of over a million Americans.

The first wave of the crisis began in the 1990s with the emergence of new pharmaceutical drugs that claimed to address "the fifth vital sign" of pain. These drugs/ like the now infamous Oxycontin produced by Purdue Pharma/ were marketed directly towards workers who struggled with work-related injuries and the long term bodily deterioration that results from a lifetime of compulsory labor. It is no coincidence that studies have shown that workers employed in industries that have higher reports of work injuries are also more likely to die from an opioid related overdose. (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report).

The new drugs were attempting to extend the natural limits of the disposal of the workers labor-power under the demanding control of capital and numb the pain of the beaten down proletariat, pacifying any discontent towards their miserable condition; but the primary purpose was to secure a new market that turned a favorable profit-it is inconsequential to the bourgeoisie what the outcomes of emerging markets have on entire nations (war, embargo, sanctions), much less an individual consumer.

In order to continuously expand this promising market, the pharmaceutical industry conjured an alliance of bourgeois "scientists" to engineer a scientific legitimacy for their proposed "fifth vital sign", and eventually the bourgeois state had all the "evidence" needed to begin relaxing regulations on the production and distribution of the drugs/ fully releasing the capital that was gnawing at the bit to prescribe as much as it could to as many as it could. By 2001, Purdue Pharma had already amassed a fortune of $2.8 Billion in revenue and between 2000 and 2010, opiate sales had quadrupled in number.

All the while, the masses were continuing to develop a growing opiate addiction through legal Oxycontin prescriptions in the home market, coupled with the rise of petty bourgeois "pill mills", whose sole purpose was to exploit the semi-legal ambiguity of the market and cashout on the high demand. Within this stage of the crisis, the effects of over-prescribing and the consequential legal disputes over the bogus data from the drug manufacturers led to the slow reintroduction of some slight restrictions again; but the damage was already done/ between 1999 and 2019, opiate related overdoses increased by 519.38%.

The flooding of opiates in the legal market resulted in a sharp decline in the prices of street opiates like heroin in the "illegal" markets. A combination of cheaper illicit opiates, increasing restrictions on the legal market, and a booming demand from addicts resulted in what is now known as the "second wave" of the opioid crisis approximately around 2010. Mexican drug cartels were able to simultaneously increase their heroin production and keep a steady supply of a low-cost product going into the US. This significantly increased the capital able to be advanced into their production, improving their stake in the global market of heroin and helping them become the 5th largest employer in Mexico. This led to a general rise in their integration into the established Mexican bourgeoisie, with allegations that Mexico’s previous president, López Obrador, had received $2 Million from cartels towards his first presidential campaign in hopes that he would treat them favorably.

New horrific heights of the crisis began to appear with the introduction of fentanyl/ a synthetic opiate with a higher potency per weight than other opiates/ into the now thriving illicit opioid markets, doubling the rate of opioid related deaths in the US from 10.4 to 21.4 per 100,000, and bringing us to the current "third wave" that has lasted from approximately 2016 until now. Because of its cheaper cost in production (no longer reliant on the time constraints and natural reproductive limits of agriculture) and its increased potency per weight compared to other opiates, the synthetic opiate caused a reduction in the necessary labor time to meet the growing market demand, yielding a far greater rate of profit for the enterprising Mexican cartels.

China is the largest supplier of the necessary components in making fentanyl and although the country has "banned" the production and sale of fully synthesized fentanyl since 2019, the precursors that are used in fentanyl production are still made through largely petty bourgeois manufacturers and are less regulated; the shipments then make their way into Mexican cartel laboratories where the components are synthesized and set out for distribution in the US.

It is at this point, the entry of the drugs into the country, where the limits of the American bourgeois political analysis begins and ends, being a frequent topic for the bourgeois parties and their rhetoric on immigration from the southern border. Trump’s infamous wall strategy, that the Democrats have all but formally adopted as their own, is their proposed "answer" to the illegal drug distribution routes as well as increased funding for drug enforcement, immigration, and border agents; but the mythical bourgeois "invisible hand of the market" passes through all physical barriers and aims to accumulate capital around the prevailing centers of gravity. Most illegal drugs come through legal points of entry, sometimes even with the aid of border agents, and the wall is nothing but a laughable symbolic failure of the bourgeoisie in being able to address the crisis from within.

The overall response to the crisis from the various bourgeoisies has been largely focused on the suppression or criticism of certain markets in favor of their own; with the bourgeoisie of the United States hypocritically only blaming the cartels, the Chinese government, and the Mexican government for the immense American deaths, while the Sackler family/ the architects of the "first wave"--dealt with only mild symbolic gestures of public shame, all while "gifting" their family $325 million from Purdue’s assets before filing bankruptcy. The Mexican bourgeoisie blames the high American demand for opiates for the rise in the power of the cartels, while their police and politicians have frequently been found to have collaborated with the organizations. The cartels wage turf wars amongst themselves for a seat on the throne of the national monopoly, sometimes resolving to consolidate into trusts instead when conditions are more profitable to do so. The Chinese bourgeoisie have left the production of fentanyl precursors untouched, as they suspended any counter-narcotic negotiations with the US in light of growing tensions between the two imperial powers, and although new regulations were promised starting in September, it’s unlikely they will completely damper a major export, seeing as they’re the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world after the US and capital never moves benevolently.

The United States funnels the majority of its resources into the DEA, FBI, and police in order to crack down on supply lines, while leaving the workers and masses struggling with addiction to the private rehab industry, which has naturally grown into a sizable multi-billion dollar industry itself:

"And just as the worn-out parts from machines or industrial experiments are utilized in some other productive process, so the energy locked up in human corpses can also be used. From this viewpoint, which is unique to the imperialist state, the work of doctors, sisters of mercy, the Red Cross, and similar organizations represents a repair job done on those instruments of imperialist competition that are worn out, but are still suitable for further use. As for the scholars, who are struggling with gum diseases, typhus, and cholera, their work is that of a lubricator who applies the oil and eliminates excessive friction in an enormous, death-dealing machine". Comrade Bukharin rightfully examined how the bourgeoisie can repurpose the "wastes" of capital back into productive elements, even the dead or dying bodies of proletarians; and the state’s reincorporation of workers tossed indefinitely into the relative surplus population while struggling with addiction are turned into profitable dependents of the rehab industry when the only other options are death or jail time.

The plight of the masses is never truly the concern of the bourgeoisie as long as the markets are favorable; all the better that the suffering is "for nothing" in their eyes. The bourgeoisie has never once hesitated to meddle in the illegal markets themselves. Beyond the everyday corruption of individual politicians and policemen in the petty drug trade, the tradition of organized action of the imperialist bourgeoisie in the drug market can be seen as far back as the first Opium War.

By 1813, the Chinese government had fully banned opium due to the rising concern that increased opium trade was causing the country to import more than it was exporting, hemorrhaging the national circulation of silver. Imperialist Britain, acting here as the smuggler of the illegal drugs, hired private merchants (often American) to continue the flow of product into China despite restrictions. In 1834, the British East India Company’s monopoly on the opium market ceased; the small dealers, now able to better compete amongst each other, began slashing drug prices, and opium usage among the Chinese masses skyrocketed.

With so many of the working peasants now paralyzed from addiction and the threat of insufficient economic reproduction necessary for the Chinese ruling class to continue to operate, the government’s decision to destroy offshore shipments and stockpiles of British opium set to be distributed in China was made; the British bourgeoisie, outraged by the loss of their precious capital, had all the casus belli needed to flex their imperialist might and send the two countries into armed conflict, with Britain eventually capturing Hong Kong and forcing Chinese markets to continue to open through further imperial pressure and conflicts. But the bourgeoisie’s participation in the illegal drug markets and their imperialist appetites have anything but ceased. In the 1980s, in what has infamously been dubbed the Iran-Contra Affair, the Reagan administration revealed the backroom cooperation of bourgeois powers when they violated their own arms embargo on Iran and facilitated the illegal trade of US-made weapons in fear that the Soviet Union might utilize the market vacuum for their own imperialist needs. The US bourgeoisie decided to "kill two birds with one stone" and funnel profits from the illegal arms deal into the reactionary Nicaraguan paramilitary militia, known as the Contras, in an effort to overthrow the Nicaraguan government and secure American influence in the country. The Contras were involved in numerous clandestine enterprises, including the distribution of cocaine into the US, notably at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was at an all time high.

Similarly in the 1980s, the CIA/ in a proxy war against the Soviet Union/ was also involved in funding the Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan, who were relying on opium and heroin exports to fund their arms procurements. These "drugs for arms" transactions developed into quite lucrative enterprises, and once Iran restricted the production of poppy seeds, Afghanistan became the natural choice for the primary supplier. Afghanistan now has almost a complete monopoly on global heroin production at approximately 85% of all heroin and morphine supplied worldwide, with many Afghan farmers completely economically reliant on the export of the poppy cash crop.

What this current opioid crisis has taught us, is that capital/ in both the "legal" and "illegal" markets/ has operated, continues to operate, and will operate by its one compelling motive: profit. The independent bourgeoisies, though engaged in a competitive struggle for monopolization, have mutually flourished in the plight of the working class in the opioid crisis, whether it be the imperial powers/ China and the US being the largest pharmaceutical markets in the world with trade agreements between the two collectively raking in $700 Billion in 2022; or the smaller countries caught in the imperial vice of the global market, becoming more and more subordinate to either the developed imperial powers or collaborating with the rising drug lords; or the cartels, who from lumpen and petty bourgeois origins and with the aid of foreign capital, are becoming formidable bourgeois powers within their countries.

All the while, the working class has become more addicted, incarcerated, left to the mercy of the rehab industry, and unfortunately killed in mass by the bourgeois poison economy; reflecting the cynical reality of capitalism’s ultimate logic and the effects of the deep alienation of workers living in the absence of a strong workers movement and the hopelessness many feel outside of sensual pleasure and individual consumption in the face of capitalistic brutality.

While the rate of opioid deaths has indeed started to fall/ for reasons still largely unknown/ the rate is still drastically higher than pre-pandemic rates and is still an ongoing tragedy. One potential reason proposed for the decline is that new tranquilizer drugs like Xylazine are replacing opiates as the drug of choice for addicts and has a lower overdose percentage compared to fentanyl; its own consequences have yet to be fully realized. Another reason could be the accessibility of naloxone has helped save people from overdose situations while they continue to struggle with day-to-day addiction; but the most grim possible reason could be that the population most at risk of dying, simply has already died, leaving a smaller pool of at-risk addicts.

We can really only believe that through the realization of a strong workers movement, alongside the restoration of the historical Communist Party, that the poisons of the bourgeoisie will no longer be the only option to soothe the bodily pain of compulsory labor, to fill the inner voids created by bourgeois society, that we will no longer be the guinea pigs of bourgeois science, and that we are able to develop our senses and employ our labor in a way that is not alien, but natural and life affirming to us, and that we will see no reason to escape material reality in favor of sense-altering commodities peddled by the various bourgeoisies.