Who is to answer for the 110,000 dead?

Yesterday, I posted Regulatory generated market needs and supply crises.  

This morning I see How the DEA is behind the continued Adderall shortage by Tom Knighton.  He has the same message as Sulkin (see yesterday's post), just more explicit.  There is an Adderall shortage because the DEA wants there to be an Adderall shortage.  He goes one step further.  Quoting another source at Reason magazine:

Government-backed lawsuits that blamed pharmaceutical distributors for contributing to opioid abuse and deaths created another kink in the stimulant supply chain. After the three largest distributors and Johnson & Johnson reached a $26 billion settlement with state and local governments in February 2022, Reuters reported, the companies began cracking down on what they deemed suspicious orders from independent pharmacies. When pharmacies dispensed stimulants such as Adderall and sedatives such as Xanax to the same patient, for example, the distributors saw a red flag.

DEA deliberately restricts production of the ingredients to Adderall in order to reduce drug dependency.  DEA also exerts control over pharmaceutical companies to reduce access to Adderall and other drugs.  As Adderall and pain control medications become unavailable, people turn to other drugs to deal with pain and ADHD.  In doing so, their experimentation with alternatives to deal with the shortages deliberately created by the DEA then leads to yet further increases in drug overdose deaths.  Deaths which are already at an all time high of 110,000.  110,00 compared to 70,000 pre-pandemic and compared to 20,000 in 2000.  

The more the DEA, FDA, and CDC get involved in managing drugs and public health, the higher is the death rate.  

Click to enlarge.

Taking 2019 as the starting point for when FDA, CDC, and DEA got more emboldened about planning and managing the pharmaceutical industry and the nation's health, we have 20,000 extra deaths in 2020, 40,000 extra deaths in 2021, and 50,000 extra deaths in 2022.  

Overall, it appears that FDA, CDC, and DEA, through bad public health policy and in particular, mismanagement of the pharmaceutical market, have directly or indirectly caused an excess of 110,000 American deaths above what we would normally have expected.

The government killed 110,000 people in three years.  Significantly more than the 80,000 in the Korean War and Vietnam War together (source) over fourteen years.

There are a thousand legitimate shadings away from that bald argument, but it is not quite a mote and bailey.  It certainly appears the bad public health policy and misguided pharmaceutical drug policy over the past three years have been responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.  

And the clerisy blithely sail down the balmy river of their sheltered and protected lives, afloat on deficit spending, and at the expense of the lives and well-being of the average American.