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Is COVID-19 Causing a New Wave of Opioid-Related Deaths?  

topicsdrugs

One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be a spike in drug overdose rates.

The Washington Post reports that as of March 2020, combined fatal and nonfatal drug overdoses were nearly 20 percent higher than through the same month in 2019, according to data collected by the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program. The New York Times, which collected data directly from state and local health agencies, reported in July that fatal drug overdoses were up 13 percent compared to the first half of last year.

Physicians and harm reduction advocates say COVID-19 has disrupted medical care for substance use disorders and imposed financial crunches on treatment centers and local health agencies. Medical examiners interviewed by the Post pointed to an increase in synthetic drugs on toxicology reports.

But this COVID-19 story is really a prohibition story. While 2020’s numbers, if they keep up, would likely be the worst ever, the U.S. also set a record for overdose deaths last year, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July. “The increase in the last few months of 2019 was steep enough to push it over the top by a little more than 200 deaths,” a CDC official told Politico.

With border and port traffic reduced, drugs like heroin and cocaine, which are generally shipped in large quantities, may be harder to move into the United States right now. But synthetic drugs that are far more potent, and thus more profitable to ship in small quantities, have been a major factor in overdose deaths for years. In 2018, the CDC says that synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were involved in 68 percent of overdose deaths, an increase of 10 percent over 2017.

To the federal government’s credit, COVID-19 has led to a few long overdue policy changes. In March, for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration relaxed restrictions on the prescribing of the medication-assisted therapy drugs methadone and buprenorphine, which people with opioid addiction can safely take to satisfy cravings. Doctors can now start a new patient on buprenorphine through telemedicine rather than an in-person visit, and continue an existing patient’s methadone protocol through telemedicine.

There are other methods for harm reduction—even short of legalizing recreational opioid sales—such as authorizing more clean needle exchanges, passing more robust “Good Samaritan” laws to protect people who call 911 during an overdose, and allowing the construction of supervised injection facilities. Given the scale of the crisis, these potentially life-saving reforms are needed now more than ever.

 

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Brickbat: I Can’t Breathe

boywearingmask_1161x653

A Spanish police officer knelt on the back of a 14-year-old boy and used a hand to press the boy’s face into the ground after cops spotted the youth on a Miranda de Ebro city street not wearing a face mask properly. Video shows the officer kneeling on the boy for at least a minute as the boy screamed in pain. Cops say the boy ignored multiple commands to put his mask on correctly. The boy and his mother face charges of not complying with the country’s mask requirements and could face other charges as well.

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Brickbat: I Can’t Breathe

boywearingmask_1161x653

A Spanish police officer knelt on the back of a 14-year-old boy and used a hand to press the boy’s face into the ground after cops spotted the youth on a Miranda de Ebro city street not wearing a face mask properly. Video shows the officer kneeling on the boy for at least a minute as the boy screamed in pain. Cops say the boy ignored multiple commands to put his mask on correctly. The boy and his mother face charges of not complying with the country’s mask requirements and could face other charges as well.

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The Export-Import Bank’s China Program Lacks Vision

reason-boat

Industrial policy that uses tariffs and subsidies to pick economic winners is once again in vogue among intellectuals. The rationale is to prevent China from “dominating” the global market with its subsidies while boosting American jobs and manufacturing. While I believe it’s unwise to mimic China’s policies to tamp down the danger of its authoritarianism, I’m amazed at cynics who support such policies but make no effort to adopt a serious strategic plan to achieve this goal.

To see why, look no further than their sudden conviction that the New Deal-era U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, Uncle Sam’s official export credit agency, is the ideal vehicle to fight China.

It’s no secret that I believe the government should not subsidize exporting companies. Vast research shows that, while subsidies might prop up the direct recipients, governments that subsidize harm their economies overall. That said, in the name of national security or geopolitical concerns, these principles may sometimes be traded off against other concerns.

But this doesn’t mean that all subsidies should get a free pass. There must be a concrete strategy behind the effort to use subsidies in this way. For instance, China mostly operates in lower-income nations. If Ex-Im is serious about competing with China, that’s where its loans should be going, rather than continuing to finance foreign borrowers in rich countries such as Italy, France, or the United Arab Emirates, where they’re served well by a commercial banking market.

Ex-Im’s recent annual conference was full of bold statements about fighting China as mandated by Congress during the agency’s reauthorization process back in December 2019. Unfortunately, despite much bluster from its leadership, there’s been no fundamental change in the way Ex-Im operates or in which companies Ex-Im extends financing to with taxpayer backing.

For instance, Ex-Im’s leadership touts its Program on China and Transformational Exports. Through that program, Congress required Ex-Im to reserve no less than 20 percent, or $27 billion, of its $135 billion in aggregate financing authority for projects meant to counter China’s progress in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, wireless communications, renewable energy, and semiconductors. Absent a concrete strategy, however, Congress’ aspirational goal has no more hope for success than the five-year development plans of the Soviet era.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on Ex-Im’s webpage for its China Program, which consists of a set of “fact sheets” for each sector that Congress identified as strategically important. The term “fact sheet” is generous, since none of them presents a strategy for how projects will be identified to compete with China. And, tellingly, its highlighted semiconductor success story is a loan extended to a plant in Germany in 2012.

This vagueness is symptomatic of the carelessness with which the semiconductor industry has been picked as a focal point for a governmentwide industrial policy effort to clamp down on China’s ambition to dominate. As the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome explains, “Numerous facts and analyses show the U.S. semiconductor industry to be in pretty good shape and the Chinese industry—while certainly subsidized—to not be the dangerous juggernaut that our elected officials claim.”

For other signs that Ex-Im doesn’t have a concrete strategy, one can tune in to the industry calls that Ex-Im Chairman Kimberly Reed hosted between May and July as part of her China Program rollout. Recordings of these calls on Ex-Im’s website reveal how little it has done in the eight months since Congress gave it a new seven-year lease on life. Aside from regurgitating the statutory language that Congress handed to her in the reauthorization bill, there’s little evidence of a coherent strategy in anything that the chairman has said or done.

Without a firm plan, Ex-Im will continue to do the same things it has always done. Writing at National Journal on Ex-Im’s China strategy, Brendan Bordelon sums it up best when he notes that Ex-Im press releases suggest “that deals related to the aircraft industry still dominate its portfolio. A spokesperson for the bank did not identify any current or pending deals pertaining to one of the 10 high-tech industries targeted for assistance in the China Program.”

Sadly, the Export-Import Bank’s failure ultimately lies with the policymakers who believe an agency that has been devoted to serving well-connected companies for so long would actually change.

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The Export-Import Bank’s China Program Lacks Vision

reason-boat

Industrial policy that uses tariffs and subsidies to pick economic winners is once again in vogue among intellectuals. The rationale is to prevent China from “dominating” the global market with its subsidies while boosting American jobs and manufacturing. While I believe it’s unwise to mimic China’s policies to tamp down the danger of its authoritarianism, I’m amazed at cynics who support such policies but make no effort to adopt a serious strategic plan to achieve this goal.

To see why, look no further than their sudden conviction that the New Deal-era U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, Uncle Sam’s official export credit agency, is the ideal vehicle to fight China.

It’s no secret that I believe the government should not subsidize exporting companies. Vast research shows that, while subsidies might prop up the direct recipients, governments that subsidize harm their economies overall. That said, in the name of national security or geopolitical concerns, these principles may sometimes be traded off against other concerns.

But this doesn’t mean that all subsidies should get a free pass. There must be a concrete strategy behind the effort to use subsidies in this way. For instance, China mostly operates in lower-income nations. If Ex-Im is serious about competing with China, that’s where its loans should be going, rather than continuing to finance foreign borrowers in rich countries such as Italy, France, or the United Arab Emirates, where they’re served well by a commercial banking market.

Ex-Im’s recent annual conference was full of bold statements about fighting China as mandated by Congress during the agency’s reauthorization process back in December 2019. Unfortunately, despite much bluster from its leadership, there’s been no fundamental change in the way Ex-Im operates or in which companies Ex-Im extends financing to with taxpayer backing.

For instance, Ex-Im’s leadership touts its Program on China and Transformational Exports. Through that program, Congress required Ex-Im to reserve no less than 20 percent, or $27 billion, of its $135 billion in aggregate financing authority for projects meant to counter China’s progress in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, wireless communications, renewable energy, and semiconductors. Absent a concrete strategy, however, Congress’ aspirational goal has no more hope for success than the five-year development plans of the Soviet era.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on Ex-Im’s webpage for its China Program, which consists of a set of “fact sheets” for each sector that Congress identified as strategically important. The term “fact sheet” is generous, since none of them presents a strategy for how projects will be identified to compete with China. And, tellingly, its highlighted semiconductor success story is a loan extended to a plant in Germany in 2012.

This vagueness is symptomatic of the carelessness with which the semiconductor industry has been picked as a focal point for a governmentwide industrial policy effort to clamp down on China’s ambition to dominate. As the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome explains, “Numerous facts and analyses show the U.S. semiconductor industry to be in pretty good shape and the Chinese industry—while certainly subsidized—to not be the dangerous juggernaut that our elected officials claim.”

For other signs that Ex-Im doesn’t have a concrete strategy, one can tune in to the industry calls that Ex-Im Chairman Kimberly Reed hosted between May and July as part of her China Program rollout. Recordings of these calls on Ex-Im’s website reveal how little it has done in the eight months since Congress gave it a new seven-year lease on life. Aside from regurgitating the statutory language that Congress handed to her in the reauthorization bill, there’s little evidence of a coherent strategy in anything that the chairman has said or done.

Without a firm plan, Ex-Im will continue to do the same things it has always done. Writing at National Journal on Ex-Im’s China strategy, Brendan Bordelon sums it up best when he notes that Ex-Im press releases suggest “that deals related to the aircraft industry still dominate its portfolio. A spokesperson for the bank did not identify any current or pending deals pertaining to one of the 10 high-tech industries targeted for assistance in the China Program.”

Sadly, the Export-Import Bank’s failure ultimately lies with the policymakers who believe an agency that has been devoted to serving well-connected companies for so long would actually change.

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Business Roundtable Endorses Pricing Carbon

The Business Roundtable has released a new document, Assessing Climate Change: Principles and Policies, endorsing carbon pricing as a means to address the threat of climate change. The statement calls for implementing “a market-based emissions reduction strategy that includes a price on carbon where it is environmentally and economically effective and administratively feasible.” The “key components” of such an approach are as follows:

Placing a price on carbon. A price on carbon would provide an effective incentive to reduce GHG emissions and mitigate climate change, including through the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies. The price-setting mechanism should be implemented in a manner that achieves desired environmental outcomes while minimizing administrative burdens and implementation costs. Establishing a clear price signal is the most important consideration for encouraging innovation, driving efficiency, and ensuring sustained environmental and economic effectiveness.

Preserving the competitiveness of U.S. businesses. Policymakers must remain alert to the prospect of economic activity and associated emissions shifting to less-regulated jurisdictions (i.e., economic and emissions “leakage”) and design policy frameworks that mitigate the unique risks of leakage faced by energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries. Rebates, allowances and/or border adjustments — consistent with U.S. international obligations — could be considered as policy mechanisms to address these challenges. Policymakers must also ensure that U.S. companies are not at a disadvantage from carbon pricing policies that may be implemented abroad.

Using resulting revenues, if any, to maximize economic and environmental benefits. If any government revenues are generated by a market-based mechanism, they should primarily be used for policies that support economic growth, reduce societal impact, and provide assistance for those individuals and communities most negatively affected. This approach should be paired with at least a doubling of federal funding for research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of GHG reduction technologies.

Although the statement does not does not explicitly endorse a revenue-neutral carbon tax, such as the so-called “cap and dividend” approach, this would seem to be the most straightforward way to price carbon in a way that preserves U.S. competitiveness and fosters economic growth. It is also the best sort of climate policy Congress could adopt.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Greg Patton / USC / “Neige” Matter

The Chronicle article, by Tom Bartlett, is here; an excerpt:

While Patton says he does genuinely feel bad that the example has caused such disruption, he has heard from Chinese students who don’t think he should have expressed remorse. “If there’s a complaint I’m getting, it’s that I apologized and should not have,” he says. He still struggles to understand how what he said could have been interpreted as laced with ill intent, as if he were sneaking in a slur. “I’m not springing it on them,” he says. “I’m talking in an international context. I’m specifically talking about China and the language most commonly spoken in the world.”

Patton doesn’t believe he’ll be able to teach in the full-time M.B.A. program again anytime soon. There’s concern at the business school that the students who complained might object to his teaching the communication course next fall, or any other course, for that matter….

While he wasn’t actually placed on leave or reprimanded, Patton does feel that his reputation has yet to be restored, and that his ability to teach remains in question. “I’ve used that example for years, and no one said anything to me. I’ve been going to China for 20 years, where I heard it all the time. I never once thought the two words were connected,” he says. “It’s painful because I’ve put in a lot of heart and soul into building up that program.”

Also:

Some of the [“Black MBA Candidates c/o 2022”] email’s factual claims are dubious. One is that Patton mispronounced the word, which appears to be untrue. The pronunciation varies depending on the region in China, but a number of videos and pronunciation guides offer the same pronunciation….

Another is that Patton purposely stopped the recording so that there would be no evidence of his having said the word. He and other professors in the business school do stop recordings when students are in breakout sessions, in order to avoid showing five minutes of the professor silently taking care of back-office work. In two of the classes that day, Patton neglected to switch the recording back on after the breakout sessions, so that the last few minutes—which included him saying the word—weren’t captured. “With all the multitasking going on, it’s not unusual to miss a restart,” Patton says. But the example from one of the classes was recorded and posted on Blackboard. That clip, which was posted on the Language Log blog, has been widely shared and viewed well over a million times. Patton says he’s never stopped recording for any reason other than to eliminate the gaps during the breakout sessions.

The complaint also says that students alerted Patton that the example was offensive, but that he continued using it in subsequent classes. Patton says he didn’t hear any objections until the end of the final class of the day ….

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Business Roundtable Endorses Pricing Carbon

The Business Roundtable has released a new document, Assessing Climate Change: Principles and Policies, endorsing carbon pricing as a means to address the threat of climate change. The statement calls for implementing “a market-based emissions reduction strategy that includes a price on carbon where it is environmentally and economically effective and administratively feasible.” The “key components” of such an approach are as follows:

Placing a price on carbon. A price on carbon would provide an effective incentive to reduce GHG emissions and mitigate climate change, including through the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies. The price-setting mechanism should be implemented in a manner that achieves desired environmental outcomes while minimizing administrative burdens and implementation costs. Establishing a clear price signal is the most important consideration for encouraging innovation, driving efficiency, and ensuring sustained environmental and economic effectiveness.

Preserving the competitiveness of U.S. businesses. Policymakers must remain alert to the prospect of economic activity and associated emissions shifting to less-regulated jurisdictions (i.e., economic and emissions “leakage”) and design policy frameworks that mitigate the unique risks of leakage faced by energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries. Rebates, allowances and/or border adjustments — consistent with U.S. international obligations — could be considered as policy mechanisms to address these challenges. Policymakers must also ensure that U.S. companies are not at a disadvantage from carbon pricing policies that may be implemented abroad.

Using resulting revenues, if any, to maximize economic and environmental benefits. If any government revenues are generated by a market-based mechanism, they should primarily be used for policies that support economic growth, reduce societal impact, and provide assistance for those individuals and communities most negatively affected. This approach should be paired with at least a doubling of federal funding for research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of GHG reduction technologies.

Although the statement does not does not explicitly endorse a revenue-neutral carbon tax, such as the so-called “cap and dividend” approach, this would seem to be the most straightforward way to price carbon in a way that preserves U.S. competitiveness and fosters economic growth. It is also the best sort of climate policy Congress could adopt.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Greg Patton / USC / “Neige” Matter

The Chronicle article, by Tom Bartlett, is here; an excerpt:

While Patton says he does genuinely feel bad that the example has caused such disruption, he has heard from Chinese students who don’t think he should have expressed remorse. “If there’s a complaint I’m getting, it’s that I apologized and should not have,” he says. He still struggles to understand how what he said could have been interpreted as laced with ill intent, as if he were sneaking in a slur. “I’m not springing it on them,” he says. “I’m talking in an international context. I’m specifically talking about China and the language most commonly spoken in the world.”

Patton doesn’t believe he’ll be able to teach in the full-time M.B.A. program again anytime soon. There’s concern at the business school that the students who complained might object to his teaching the communication course next fall, or any other course, for that matter….

While he wasn’t actually placed on leave or reprimanded, Patton does feel that his reputation has yet to be restored, and that his ability to teach remains in question. “I’ve used that example for years, and no one said anything to me. I’ve been going to China for 20 years, where I heard it all the time. I never once thought the two words were connected,” he says. “It’s painful because I’ve put in a lot of heart and soul into building up that program.”

Also:

Some of the [“Black MBA Candidates c/o 2022”] email’s factual claims are dubious. One is that Patton mispronounced the word, which appears to be untrue. The pronunciation varies depending on the region in China, but a number of videos and pronunciation guides offer the same pronunciation….

Another is that Patton purposely stopped the recording so that there would be no evidence of his having said the word. He and other professors in the business school do stop recordings when students are in breakout sessions, in order to avoid showing five minutes of the professor silently taking care of back-office work. In two of the classes that day, Patton neglected to switch the recording back on after the breakout sessions, so that the last few minutes—which included him saying the word—weren’t captured. “With all the multitasking going on, it’s not unusual to miss a restart,” Patton says. But the example from one of the classes was recorded and posted on Blackboard. That clip, which was posted on the Language Log blog, has been widely shared and viewed well over a million times. Patton says he’s never stopped recording for any reason other than to eliminate the gaps during the breakout sessions.

The complaint also says that students alerted Patton that the example was offensive, but that he continued using it in subsequent classes. Patton says he didn’t hear any objections until the end of the final class of the day ….

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Attorney General Bill Barr Encourages Federal Prosecutors To Charge Violent Protesters With Sedition

reason-barr

The Trump administration’s aggressive response to the demonstrations and riots that have broken out in U.S. cities following the police killing of George Floyd continues apace, with U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly suggesting that prosecutors charge demonstrators with sedition.

Barr, according to a story published today by The Wall Street Journal, encouraged prosecutors on a conference call last week to charge violent protestors with federal offenses wherever possible. The attorney general encouraged the use of sedition charges even in contexts when state charges would apply, reports the Journal, which spoke to several people familiar with the call.

Federal sedition law makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the U.S. government, and it comes with a potential penalty of 20 years in prison.

The invocation of rarely used sedition laws to go after protestors is raising alarm among civil libertarians and some legal experts.

“If you start charging those people, even if you don’t get a conviction, it may make people think twice before going out to exercise their right to free speech,” said Jenny Carroll, a University of Alabama law professor, to the Journal.

“Treating protest as a form of sedition won’t stand up in court, but that is clearly not the point here,” Somil Trivedi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), tells Reason. “This is a tyrannical and un-American attempt to suppress demands for racial justice and an end to police violence. Independent and ethical prosecutors should reject this administration’s authoritarian impulses.”

So far, the federal government so far charged 200 people with violent offenses, including gun charges, related to recent protests. That includes two New York lawyers who’ve been charged with federal explosives charges for torching an empty police car. If convicted they could face life in prison.

Barr’s reported encouragement of sedition charges follows a summer of federal agents deploying aggressive tactics against protestors.

In Washington, D.C., Barr himself ordered police to clear peaceful demonstrators out of Lafayette Square so President Donald Trump could pose in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

In Portland, Oregon, U.S. marshals and agents under the control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took to arresting protestors in unmarked vans. The federal courthouse building in Portland had become a target of both nonviolent and violent protests.

The ACLU of Oregon filed a lawsuit against DHS and the U.S. marshals in July, accusing them of assaulting journalists covering the Portland protests and other aggressive tactics.

Earlier this month in Washington state, a task force that includes federal agents killed  Michael Reinoehl, a suspect in the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter during a Portland protest. In a subsequent interview, Trump said: “This guy was a violent criminal and the U.S. Marshals killed him…And I will tell you something: That’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

Both Trump and Barr have both pointed to antifa and other leftist radicals to justify an aggressive federal response to violence at protests around the country.

Left-wing groups aren’t the only ones being subjected to a federal crackdown. In late August, the FBI conducted a truly absurd sting on two Boogaloo Boys (an ideologically heterodox movement that predicts a coming civil war) who attended demonstrations in Minneapolis. The feds accuse them of trying to sell weapons to Hamas.

Arson, vandalism, and other acts of rioting have accompanied many of the anti-police-brutality protests around the country. But since this violence is often adjacent to protected First Amendment activities, law enforcement’s response needs to be careful, targeted, and proportionate. We should try to stop the violence and vandalism, but peaceful protesters shouldn’t be unjustly punished or otherwise dissuaded from exercising their rights to free speech and assembly.

By encouraging prosecutors to be as punitive as possible, Barr appears to be taking the exact opposite approach. His suggestion that they dust off sedition laws should alarm all civil liberties advocates.

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