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Ioan Grillo: The Mexican Drug Cartels
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Ioan Grillo: The Mexican Drug Cartels

The supply side of America's street addiction crisis
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A Guerrero Community Police member stands guard in the hills of Carrizalillo, Guerrero state, Mexico, on March 24, 2018. In the mountainous area of Guerrero state, one of the poorest and the most violent of Mexico, almost 7,000 people have taken the fight against organized crime as a personal cause making up a "community police". Urged by their daily life conflicts with criminal groups and the lack of answers from the government, these self-made-soldiers take up arms while they dream of peace. / AFP PHOTO / Pedro PARDO / TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Yussel GONZALEZ (Photo credit should read PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images)

The public debate on how to address America’s street addiction crisis has centered on two competing approaches: the “harm reduction” strategy of keeping addicts safe as they continue to use, and the “recovery” model, which advocates mandated treatment to get addicts off of drugs altogether.

But there’s a dark reality that goes unacknowledged in that debate. With massive volumes of fentanyl and meth flooding into the country, neither approach can ever keep up with the pace at which the addiction crisis is growing.

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