ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- Once the Trump administration started attacking Venezuelan drug boats that appeared to be traveling to the United States, it was inevitable that Americans would be pulled back into a conversation about the much-ballyhooed War on Drugs. Just as it was predictable that, once we were enmeshed in that dialogue, we'd lose our bearings and begin to focus more on the supply and less on the demand.

Of course, when the subject is illegal drugs, Americans would much rather talk about smugglers than consumers.

Those who sneak drugs into the United States are foreign actors, dark and shadowy "bad hombres" from Latin America -- a region that President Donald Trump considers dirty and dysfunctional. Smugglers are an external threat that U.S. customs can keep off our shoreline or the U.S. military can blow them out of the sea.

On the other hand, those who consume drugs tend to be closer to home. Sometimes, they actually reside in our home. They're teachers, doctors, football coaches and PTA presidents. They're our parents, siblings, colleagues and children. And we don't know how to react to that.

What should be clear to all of us is that the way that Americans have been reacting for the last few decades is all wrong. Too many Americans are in denial about the fact that, without the demand, there would be no supply. The entire drug trafficking industry would collapse in a month. When a family member dies of a drug overdose, we would never dare blame the victim. So, instead, we blame the narco-trafficker.

Trump administration officials like to talk a lot about illicitly manufactured fentanyl, which in 2023 accounted for nearly 73,000 deaths in the United States. Fentanyl is also mixed with other illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine. Drug addicts purchase those other drugs, aware that they have been laced with fentanyl. Others know they're using fentanyl, and they don't seem to care about the risks. In either case, the addicts get high -- and then they die.

Whose fault is this? Drug cartels that manufacture fentanyl in Mexico and then smuggle it into the United States because there is a market for it here? Or China, where the chemicals needed to make fentanyl are produced?

I keep waiting for at least some of the blame to find its way to where it belongs: on the shoulders of parents in America, who set out to be cool and open-minded and wound up being weak enablers of their children's drug use.

Memory takes me back to my grandfather. Having come from Mexico legally with his family as a boy during the Mexican Revolution, he wasn't the least bit interested in being best friends with any of his five sons. He was too busy after long days in the fields -- raising them to be upright and hard-working men who honored their responsibilities. If he issued an edict that made any of them angry, he couldn't care less.

I had the privilege of interviewing all four of my uncles before they passed away. I asked each of them about my grandfather's approach to discipline. What they shared with me squared with what my father had told me all my life, that the old man from Chihuahua did not believe in sparing the rod -- or, for that matter, the belt, the switch, the hose or whatever was handy at the moment. Most of the boys' offenses were misdemeanors like fighting each other or ditching school. But, I wondered, what would have happened if they had done something worse?

So, one day, I asked Uncle Frank, my dad's oldest brother, how he thought my grandpa would have reacted if one of his sons had tried an illegal substance. When I asked the question, the recreational use of marijuana was not yet legal in our home state of California. My tio's face turned white, and he hung his head. Then he shuddered. "No, no, no. Are you kidding? Forget it! He would have killed us."

That story goes a long way toward explaining how, by all accounts, the five boys made it through the 1960s and 1970s -- decades that recorded higher than usual rates of drug use among Americans -- and never smoked one marijuana joint or snorted one line of cocaine. They weren't worried about the police or concerned about the effect that drugs might have on their bodies. But they were absolutely terrified of their father.

I can't help but think that young people -- in both the Millennial Generation and Generation Z -- could use a touch more terror in their lives.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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