By Connor Kubeisy, University of California–Berkeley
An unprecedented 93,331 Americans were lost to overdose deaths in 2020— nearly 30 percent more than in 2019 and nearly 2,000 percent more than the 4,506 lost in 1990. Having passed, in June 2021, the fiftieth anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of the War on Drugs, it is clear that the War on Drugs has failed and that a new approach is required.