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Much of the world is facing a crisis around the use and abuse of various sorts of substances, with different countries taking different approaches to the issue. The United States has generally focused on prohibition, enforcement and corrections; the Netherlands and Portugal have tried legalization and drug therapies for users. Still, headlines worldwide indicate many deaths each day from overdoses.

The Business of Drugs, a six-part documentary series on Netflix, features former CIA analyst Amarylis Fox exploring issues around six different types of illegal drugs. For leftist critics of drug prohibition, this series provides excellent examples of how capitalism is a major cause of the drug crisis – both in terms of why people use drugs in the first place and the fact that the US, in particular, currently lacks a planned or coherent response to this crisis. Perhaps the most politically salient episodes are the ones on cannabis and opioids. Fox herself ends the series with a clear critique of “unregulated capitalism.”

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