Places and Forms of Power

Places and Forms of power

• INTRO

• In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence the behavior of people. In order to live together, members of a community accept rules, laws. This helps to create social cohesion but can also lead to conflicts and tensions.
• The opiod crisis in America has begun in 2010 resulting in the vast majority of the overprescription of opiods drugs as medication as for instance oxycodone or others painkillers. In 2016, 42 000 Americans died due to an opiods overdose and half a million will die in the next decade. Hence, it is necessary to treat addictions correctly in order to stop the crisis and to influence people in order to change things.
• Then, we can wonder what are the diferents solutions to stop this crisis and to influence people’s behavior.
• To carry out my development, I will study 2 complementary solutions: first of all, I will show that it is necessary to improve treatments and secondly, I will demonstrate that some measures have to be taken in addition as improving treatments isn’t enough.

• I. Treatments

• To shut down this crisis, in my opinion, we need to be able to treat correctly addictions which represent a major societal problem. People who are alrealdy addicted are more than we think, and it is absolutely necessary to cure them properly : namely, with a suitable treatment and not with a criminal punishment.
• Indeed, In contrary to Trump’s opinion which suggested the death penalty for drugs’ traffickers in a television conference on NBC in 2018 as a solution to stop this crisis, I believe that we should not produce the same mistake we have already made. Indeed, Trump compares the killers’ punishment to the dealers’ one as both kill people but only the killers go to jail for life or have the death penalty.
• However, as Nan Whaley said in a article of the website USATODAY in 2018, The failed War on Drugs which started with Nixon put too many people in jail instead of treatment: a mistake that cost us countless lives and taxpayer dollars.
• Thus, Whaley proposes to treat addictions as a public health problem and not as a criminal justice one.
• According to him, it is necessary to expand access to treatment and to better monitor opioid prescriptions.

• II.  More

• The 2nd step to adopt to finally terminate this crisis consists, as far as I am concerned, to create and then adopt some measures by precaution in order that in the future, people do not become addicted.
• Some measures have already been taken in the past : for instance President Reagan in the 80’s made a campaign : the JUST SAY NO one, in order to put across to children that they should not touch to drugs.
• Moreover, to complete theses old measures, some associations which are still working nowadays have been created as the DEA ( Drug Enforcement Administration) one in 1973 or the CDC( Center of Disease Control)…
• However, threatened today by this crisis, we have to take new measures but above all it is necessary that we understand why so many people, even nowadays, are addicted to these drugs.
• Indeed, as Andrew Sullivan noticed in The Poison We Pick in 2018, for the moment, the government is only pointing the pharmaceutical companies as the vilains or the doctors as enablers.
• Nevertheless, according to Sullivan, the opioid crisis in America is a story of pain and the search for an end to it as it was the case during the crisis of LSD in the 60’s and the cocaine one in the 80’s.
• Hence, for him, the opioid crisis is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than America has never knew before with people who are becoming indifferent to life and death and are settling for withdrawal and nothingness.
• Sullivan is clear: it is obligatory to understand the crux of these behaviors and to fix it as soon as possible.

• CONCLUSION

• To put in a nutshell, the outcome of the crisis, to me, depends on American’s governement decision and then mentality. I hope that they will be able to evolve and to open their minds concerning diferents options, solutions to influence people’s behavior and habits which suppose to consider addictions as a public health problem.
• Hence, this crisis is perfectly linked to the notion places and forms of power and we can wonder if, besides the USA, the opioid crisis is also a major societal problem in others countries.

...