FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@anonymousspeech.com

There is an opiate epidemic in the USA. Opioid use has tripled since 2000.  One hundred thirty people die daily from opioid overdoses.
Big pharmaceutical corporations (Big Pharma) use their lobbying power to expand their massive production and distribution of these addicting drugs.  That’s capitalism:  maximizing profits by super-exploiting and controlling the masses.
In the USA, drug companies lobbied in 2001 to get the Joint Commission to make pain rating (“the 5th vital sign”) a required standard.  Since then, most hospitals make doctors assess pain for every patient and prescribe pain medications. 
Big Pharma knew and didn’t care that opiates are not effective for long-term pain.  Nor that these addicting drugs were pouring into communities where alienated (and often jobless) youth and workers could easily get them. The age-adjusted opioid-involved death rate nearly quadrupled by 2014.
US capitalism’s “solution” to the opioid epidemic is federal legislation that includes increased access to naloxone, a medication used to save people from an overdose.  Guess who will profit?  The same pharmaceutical corporations! One manufacturer increased the wholesale price of its naloxone auto-injector to $4,500 this year (from under $700 in 2014).

The British organized this huge corporate trade supported by the government and navy to successfully attack China’s enormous wealth, as the world’s leading economy. The Chinese Emperor ruled the drugs illegal, ordering the ports closed to opium. But the British, supported by their government, smuggled it in illegally. This led to two Opium Wars between China and Britain. Britain won, forcing China to open up to opium trade. The trade depleted China of its huge silver reserves, and destroyed China’s industrial production as millions of Chinese workers and peasants became opium addicts

China:  Communists Fought Drug Addiction
Back in the 1830’s, British imperialists used their military power to force India to grow opium and China to buy it.  Their goals were vast profits and a weaker China.   By 1880 over 6,500 tons of opium entered China annually. China itself started cultivating opium.  In the early 1900’s, it was the world’s biggest opium producer. Drug addiction grew massively. Criminal gangs linked to Western powers ran the drug trade.
When communists took power in China in 1949, there were 70 million opium addicts.  By 1952, there were practically none!  The Chinese communists saw the need to change the social conditions that had enabled drug manufactures to flourish profitably. 
Before the revolution, the best land was devoted to the opium poppy, even when there was a serious shortage of cereal grains. The communists abolished poppy cultivation and opium importation. They relied on the mobilized masses to carry this out.  
Families helped addicted relatives to quit. Peasants got help to plough up their opium crops and plant wheat or rice instead. Communists mobilized neighborhoods in a massive educational program. Street committees held study groups to discuss the evils of opium and heroin. Drugs lost their appeal when the masses saw a bright future ahead.
Addicts were considered victims of the enemy rather than criminals. After their recovery, they got training and then jobs. Communities pressured dealers to stop.  They accepted those who did and trained them for work. They imprisoned or killed those few who refused.
The anti-opium campaign was part of an overall mobilization to rid the country of many capitalist evils. It was a struggle to destroy the material basis of drug addiction: capitalist exploitation.
The unified, collective action of the masses of workers and peasants temporarily conquered opium addiction in China.  They fought for a new society meant to meet the masses’ needs in every aspect of life.
But Chinese communists did not lead the way to completely eliminate the wage system and money.  Instead of building communism, they implemented socialism (actually, state capitalism).
Drug addiction has returned to China along with market capitalism.   Addiction to legal or illegal drugs is mainly a social disease, caused by social conditions.  We can only end it by attacking the root of exploitation, alienation and oppression: capitalism and its wage slavery and profit mode of production. 

No Drug Addiction in Our Bright Communist Future
The Chinese communist fight to eradicate opium addiction shows the power of the mobilized masses. To eliminate the scourge of drug addiction for good, workers must mobilize the masses worldwide consciously for communism.
Now we know we must fight directly to eliminate wage slavery.  Masses will run communist society collectively to meet our needs. 
We need to organize study groups of International Communist Workers’ Party in every neighborhood, production center and military installation.  We must help each other free ourselves from the poisons of capitalism, including drugs, racism, sexism and individualism. 
Let’s build healthy communist relations in a mass party that will destroy the material basis of drug addiction!

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