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Indiscriminate Data Surveillance

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Working hand-in-hand with the private sector, largely in a regulatory vacuum, policing agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are acquiring and using vast reservoirs of personal data. They are doing so indiscriminately, which is to say without any reason to suspect the individuals whose data they are collecting are acting unlawfully. And they are doing it in bulk. People are unlikely to want this personal information shared with anyone, let alone law enforcement. And yet today, private companies are helping law enforcement gather it by the terabyte. On all of us.

Our thesis is straightforward: the unregulated collection of this data must cease, at least until basic rule-of-law requisites are met. Any collection must be authorized by democratically accountable bodies. It must be transparent. It must be based on clear proof of efficacy (that a legitimate purpose actually is being served). There must be protections that minimize or avoid harms to individuals and society. And, of course, there must be judicial review of whether indiscriminate bulk data collection is constitutional, either at all or with regard to specific programs.

The basis for this thesis is a first-of-its-kind review of instances, from the dawn of the Information Age, in which Congress acted on these very issues. Much of that history involves indiscriminate collection of data on Americans for reasons of national and domestic security, because national security represents the outer bounds of what law enforcement and intelligence agencies are permitted to do, and much of what is done in the name of national security is inappropriate for domestic policing. Yet, in incident after incident, Congress made clear that indiscriminate bulk collection of Americans’ data is unacceptable, unlawful, and of dubious constitutionality. To the extent that such collection was permitted at all, Congress demanded the very requisites specified above. Today’s indiscriminate bulk surveillance by federal, state, and local policing agencies violates virtually all of these congressionally established norms. It should cease, at least until the rule-of-law requisites are met.

Introduction

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which allowed states to criminalize abortion and which generated huge controversy that ripples today, also directed attention to a seemingly incongruous matter: personal data.1 1.142 S. Ct. 2228, 2242–43 (2022); Philip Bump, The Patterns of Out-of-State Abortions, Wash. Post (Sept. 1, 2023, 4:48 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/01/‌patterns-out-of-state-abortions/ [https://perma.cc/F8ZP-36H2].Show More To be specific, apps used to track menstrual cycles and other details of individuals’ intimate lives.2 2.Rina Torchinsky, How Period Tracking Apps and Data Privacy Fit into a Post-Roe v. Wade Climate, NPR (June 24, 2022, 3:06 PM), https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1097482967/‌roe-v-wade-supreme-court-abortion-period-apps [https://perma.cc/4XCD-WTWQ]; Sara Morrison, Should I Delete My Period App? And Other Post-Roe Privacy Questions, Vox (July 6, 2022, 12:50 PM), https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/7/6/23196809/period-apps-roe-dobbs‌-data-privacy-abortion [https://perma.cc/3UCU-L2M8].Show More The fear motivating the attention was that prosecutors would obtain the data in an attempt to prove that women had indeed aborted a fetus.3 3.Jay Edelson, Post-Dobbs, Your Private Data Will Be Used Against You, Bloomberg News (Sept. 22, 2022, 4:00 AM), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/post-dobbs-your-pr‌ivate-data-will-be-used-against-you [https://perma.cc/E23W-DNMK]; see also Leah R. Fowler & Michael R. Ulrich, Femtechnodystopia, 75 Stan. L. Rev. 1233, 1237–38 (2023) (discussing how prosecutors and government officials could leverage consumer data to enforce abortion prohibitions or criminally prosecute users).Show More

This alarm was entirely justifiable—prosecutors already have sought private data for abortion prosecutions.4 4.Cat Zakrzewski, Pranshu Verma & Claire Parker, Texts, Web Searches About Abortion Have Been Used to Prosecute Women, Wash. Post (July 3, 2022, 9:20 AM), https://www.wash‌ingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/03/abortion-data-privacy-prosecution/ [https://perma.cc/‌UUB7-H9NS].Show More Still, there was something deeply naive about the sudden attention to law enforcement’s collection of personal digital data.5 5.Ryan Phillips, Infant Death Case Heading Back to Grand Jury, Starkville Daily News (May 9, 2019), https://www.starkvilledailynews.com/infant-death-case-heading-back-to-gran‌d-jury/article_cf99bcb0-71cc-11e9-963a-eb5dc5052c92.html [https://perma.cc/D3Z9-39‌NR]; Grace Oldham & Dhruv Mehrotra, Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients, The Markup (June 15, 2022, 6:00 AM), https://th‌emarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/06/15/facebook-and-anti-abortion-clinics-are-collecting-highly‌-sensitive-info-on-would-be-patients [https://perma.cc/379S-92YA]. For Supreme Court cases expressing protection for intimate privacy, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 485–86 (1965) (identifying a right to privacy for couples seeking to procure contraception); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 568 (1969) (holding that the First and Fourth Amendments protect the possession of “obscene material”).Show More For some time now, law enforcement has been gaining access to the most minute details of our personal lives: where we go and stay; with whom we text and chat; what we read and search; what we say to digital assistants; what medical advice we seek; and which health providers we see.6 6.Danielle Keats Citron, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age 58–63 (2022); see infra Part I.Show More At volume, all data becomes intimate data, and today, law enforcement is gathering it up by the terabyte.7 7.Gabby Miller, Transcript: Senate Hearing on Protecting Americans’ Privacy and the AI Accelerant, Tech Pol’y Press (July 12, 2024) (statement of Ryan Calo), https://www.techpol‌icy.press/transcript-senate-hearing-on-protecting-americans-privacy-and-the-ai-accelerant/ [https://perma.cc/Z87R-JXR5] (“AI is increasingly able to derive the intimate from the available.”); Alicia Solow-Niederman, Information Privacy and the Inference Economy, 117 Nw. U. L. Rev. 357, 361 (2022) (exploring the implications of machine learning tools’ ability to derive personal data from “aggregations of seemingly innocuous data”); see infra Part I.Show More On each and every one of us.

What the abortion decision did was bring the spotlight of public attention to what already is an extensive and deepening relationship between law enforcement and private actors, which has enabled indiscriminate data surveillance, in bulk. It’s no secret that private actors collect vast amounts of data on each of us.8 8.See, e.g., Carly Page, Hotel Giant Marriott Confirms Yet Another Data Breach, TechCrunch (July 6, 2022, 7:21 AM), https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/06/marriott-breach-ag‌ain/ [https://perma.cc/Q2HF-8P5S]; Andrew Leahey, Equifax, Experian Must Pay More Than Pennies for Data Breaches, Bloomberg Tax (Feb. 21, 2023, 4:45 AM), https://news.bloomber‌gtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/equifax-experian-must-pay-more-than-pennies-for-data-breaches [https://perma.cc/Q2HZ-HG5B].Show More What is less widely known, but essential to understand, is the full extent to which that data can be, is, and will be shared with agents of the state. Some twenty years ago, Michael D. Birnhack and Niva Elkin-Koren called this “The Invisible Handshake.”9 9.Michael D. Birnhack & Niva Elkin-Koren, The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Environment, Va. J.L. & Tech., Summer 2003, at 1.Show More Today, it is a full embrace.

This Article is about the acquisition by law enforcement of personal data indiscriminately and in bulk. “Indiscriminately” means it is acquired without the sort of lawful predicate—such as probable cause or reasonable suspicion—that typically limits when law enforcement may target individuals. “In bulk” captures how the technology and economics of the digital age enable policing agencies to gather this data on all of us, or any subset it chooses.10 10.On the ability to collect data in bulk and the economics of storing it, see Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think 6–12 (2013).Show More Today, policing agencies are acquiring access to the personal data of vast swaths of society, without regard to whether the targets of data acquisition are suspected of any unlawful conduct whatsoever. And they are using artificial-intelligence-driven tools to develop vivid pictures of who we are, what we do, where we go, what we spend, with whom we communicate, and much, much more.11 11.See infra Part I.Show More Make no mistake, the state has each of us under surveillance, and the extent and cohesiveness of that surveillance are growing by the day.

Although we know for certain this access to vast amounts of personal data is happening, far too few of the details are public because law enforcement and private parties are engaged in deliberate evasion to prevent our knowing. Through misleading procurement practices, memoranda of understanding (“MOU”) mutually pledging nondisclosure, parallel construction (the act of hiding from courts how law enforcement gets its leads), and more, public-private partners effectively manage to assemble vast pools of data outside the public eye, thereby avoiding any oversight.12 12.Id.Show More

What this Article demonstrates is that this sort of gathering of massive reservoirs of personal data about innocent people (to use a shorthand for those for whom there is no suspicion of wrongdoing) has been condemned by Congress and the broader society it represents time and again, and justifiably so. From the birth of the age of computerization, to the deeply problematic and nefarious conduct of government agents during COINTELPRO, to the secret collections of data by the National Security Agency as revealed by Edward Snowden, when Congress has been forced to act on this sort of indiscriminate data collection, it has ordered this practice to cease.13 13.See infra Part II.Show More It is true, as we explain in Part III, that members of Congress, as well as state and local legislators, prefer to duck confrontations with law enforcement whenever they can—and they certainly do. But when compelled to act, Congress has made clear that the unregulated gathering of computerized dossiers endangers personal privacy and security, and risks unchecked government power. Such surveillance has chilled and destroyed constitutional rights exercised in the service of social change, has fallen particularly heavily on vulnerable and marginalized minorities, and has put way too much power in the hands of executive branch actors.14 14.Citron, supra note 6, at xvi.Show More

Still, to be clear—and this is what makes the issue a difficult one—law enforcement access to digital reservoirs may serve important purposes. Ever since the advent of the internet, crime has moved online. From those who steal our identities and empty our bank accounts, to those who threaten and stalk us, to those who would terrorize us or foment insurrection, crime is online and is itself driven by access to personal data.15 15.See, e.g., Luke Barr, Americans Lost $10.3 Billion to Internet Scams in 2022, FBI Says, ABC News (Mar. 13, 2023, 4:27 PM), https://abcnews.go.com/Business/americans-lost-103-billion-internet-scams-2022-fbi/story?id=97832789 [https://perma.cc/7DQP-U9ZP]; Joshua Barlow, Naval Officer Charged with Harassment, Cyberstalking, Identity Theft Against Ex-Wife, WTOP News (Oct. 24, 2022, 4:59 AM), https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2022/10‌/naval-officer-charged-with-harassment-cyberstalking-identity-theft-against-ex-wife/ [https://perma.cc/6SP2-MBGR]; Farah Pandith & Jacob Ware, Teen Terrorism Inspired by Social Media Is on the Rise. Here’s What We Need to Do., NBC News (Mar. 22, 2021, 4:30 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/teen-terrorism-inspired-social-media-ris‌e-here-s-what-we-ncna1261307 [https://perma.cc/V62E-GVYS]; Rebecca Heilweil & Shirin Ghaffary, How Trump’s Internet Built and Broadcast the Capitol Insurrection, Vox (Jan. 8, 2021, 5:00 PM), https://www.vox.com/recode/22221285/trump-online-capitol-riot-far-right-parler-twitter-facebook [https://perma.cc/52NQ-5YZX].Show More Law enforcement needs to use digital tools of some sort to keep us safe from wrongdoing, and those may well require access to personal data—though even yet it remains open to question whether that should include the data of individuals suspected of nothing.

Society’s goal should be a reasoned balance, but things now are seriously out of kilter. Working hand-in-hand with the private sector, policing agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are indiscriminately accessing vast reservoirs of personal data.16 16.See infra Part I.Show More In the absence of regulation, this has made suspects of us all, and invited harms of the most grievous sort.17 17.Id.Show More

Our thesis is straightforward: the current state of affairs must end. This is not necessarily to call for a ban on all indiscriminate bulk data-collection partnerships. As we’ve indicated, there are reasons some degree of collection might be advisable for safety’s sake. Rather, what we do here is derive from congressional debates and critical legislative actions taken since the dawn of the Information Age a set of very basic rule-of-law requisites that must be met before indiscriminate data surveillance can continue. Collection must be democratically authorized, not left to policing agencies alone to decide. The fact of collection must be transparent, even if some particulars are not, for security reasons. There must be a clear showing that collection protects public safety. And there must be safeguards in place—among them antidiscrimination, minimization, and retention limits—to mitigate or eliminate a number of obvious harms to privacy, personal security, equality, and overweening state power. And all of this must be open to constitutional scrutiny.18 18.The recent guidance to federal agencies by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) regarding the use of artificial intelligence is greatly consistent with much of what we argue for here. See Proposed Memorandum from Shalanda D. Young, Dir., Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, to the Heads of Exec. Dep’ts & Agencies, Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence 10, 16, 18, 22 (2023) (requiring public input, transparency, a showing of efficacy, and detailed safeguards, with hopefully narrow exceptions for some law enforcement and national security activity); accord Joy Buolamwini & Barry Friedman, How the Federal Government Can Rein in A.I. in Law Enforcement, N.Y. Times (Jan. 2, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/‌ai-police-regulation.html [https://perma.cc/4U5V-UVSJ] (acknowledging OMB’s requirements and urging closing of loopholes).Show More We are skeptical that much of today’s indiscriminate bulk public-private surveillance will satisfy these tests. But our overarching point is that indiscriminate bulk collection of our data behind our backs must come to a halt, and if it occurs at all, it must proceed only by the terms set after open and transparent democratic debate. This is what congressional action, when it has occurred, teaches us.

As we write, it is an understatement to say these issues are at the forefront of national politics.19 19.Thanks to Noah Chauvin for enhancing our list of examples.Show More Congress is embroiled in debates over the limits on policing agencies purchasing personal data from data brokers.20 20.In April of 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (“FAINFSA”) by a vote of 219-199. See H.R. 4639—Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4639/all-ac‌tions [https://perma.cc/Z8XL-6JC7] (last visited Sept. 7, 2024). This bill would flatly prohibit some of the practices we describe. Joseph Cox, Bill That Would Stop the Government Buying Data Without a Warrant Passes Key Hurdle, Vice (July 19, 2023, 11:19 AM), https://www.vic‌e.com/en/article/wxjgd4/fourth-amendment-is-not-for-sale-act-passes-committee [https://per‌ma.cc/GVB6-6KK7]. The Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, which incorporates FAINSFA in full, passed through the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 35-2. H.R. 6570, 118th Cong. (2023); see also H.R. 6570—Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act of 2023, Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-co‌ngress/house-bill/6570/all-actions-without-amendments [https://perma.cc/3XJS-Y9XC] (last visited May 15, 2024). The bipartisan, bicameral Government Surveillance Reform Act exceeds even FAINFSA in the information it would protect. H.R. 6262, 118th Cong. (2023); S. 3234, 118th Cong. (2023). The House of Representatives, by voice vote, adopted the Davidson-Jacobs Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would have prohibited the Department of Defense from purchasing U.S. persons’ protected information without a warrant. H.Amdt.256 to H.R. 2670, Congress.gov (July 14, 2023), https://www.cong‌ress.gov/amendment/118th-congress/house-amendment/256/text?s=3&r=5 [https://perma.cc/‌U8KM-X75W]. For an overview of the threat to privacy that data brokers present and an evaluation of certain legislative proposals, see Emile Ayoub & Elizabeth Goitein, Closing the Data Broker Loophole, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (Feb. 13, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/‌our-work/research-reports/closing-data-broker-loophole [https://perma.cc/S3H5-5T7U].Show More Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act recently was reauthorized, but only for two years rather than the typical five, and it encountered an especially rocky road in light of recent revelations of FBI overreach.21 21.See Biden Signs Reauthorization of Surveillance Program into Law Despite Privacy Concerns, NPR (Apr. 20, 2024, 9:54 PM), https://www.npr.org/2024/‌04/20/1246‌076114/sen‌ate-passes-reauthorization-surveillance-program-fisa [https://perma.cc/M5XF-LV5R] (“The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.”); see also Preston Marquis & Molly E. Reynolds, House Passes Section 702 Reauthorization, Lawfare (Apr. 16, 2024, 12:59 PM), https://www.lawfaremedia‌.org/article/house-passes-section-702-reauthorization [https://perma.cc/78RP-RGB8] (describing the two-year reauthorization as a “key concession” to ensure the bill’s passage).Show More In the course of reauthorization, Section 702 proponents adopted some reforms and promised to systematically consider more.22 22.On the nature of the reforms, see infra notes 252–56. A commission was established to “consider ongoing reforms.” Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, Pub. L. No. 118-49, § 18(c), 138 Stat. 885 (2024) (codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. § 1881a); see also David Aaron, Unpacking the FISA Section 702 Reauthorization Bill, Just Sec. (Apr. 18, 2024), https://www.justsecurity.org/94771/unpacking-the-fisa-section-702-reauthorization-bill/ [https://perma.cc/XE4T-MVM3]. The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, acknowledged drafting problems with the reauthorization bill and promised to work towards improvements this summer. Noah Chauvin, Too Much Power for Spy Agencies, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (Apr. 23, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opi‌nion/too-much-power-spy-agencies [https://perma.cc/J438-M9P9]. One upshot of the fight was that the FISA reform bill will come to the House floor for passage by simple majority, rather than requiring a two-thirds vote as leadership originally had planned. See Marquis & Reynolds, supra note 21.Show More The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (“ODNI”) recently declassified a report on the Intelligence Community’s use of commercially available information, the most salient part of which is a recognition that indiscriminate bulk collection of information involves highly personal information and that claiming its collection avoids constitutional or other concerns simply because it is “publicly” or “commercially” available is unpersuasive. ODNI called for top-to-bottom reconsideration of the issue.23 23.Off. of the Dir. of Nat’l Intel., Senior Advisory Grp., Panel on Commercially Available Info., Report to the Director of National Intelligence 2 (Jan. 27, 2022) [hereinafter ODNI Report], https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Repor‌t-on-CAI-January2022.pdf [https://perma.cc/69EZ-2NK2].Show More The Federal Trade Commission brought an action in January of 2024 against data broker X-Mode Social for selling sensitive data obtained from phones without customer consent.24 24.Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Order Prohibits Data Broker X-Mode Social and Outlogic from Selling Sensitive Location Data (Jan. 9, 2024), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/ftc-order-prohibits-data-broker-x-mode-social-outlogic-selling-sensitive-location-data [https://perma.cc/2RNF-JBTP]. On May 1, 2024, the FTC released its final order against InMarket in which it prohibited the data aggregator from sharing or selling sensitive location data for advertising and marketing purposes. Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Finalizes Order with InMarket Prohibiting It from Selling or Sharing Precise Location Data (May 1, 2024), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/pre‌ss-releases/2024/05/ftc-finalizes-order-inmarket-prohibiting-it-selling-or-sharing-precise-loc‌ation-data [https://perma.cc/B6XR-578H].Show More That same month, Senator Ron Wyden forced the Intelligence Community to reveal it was buying Americans’ location data by putting a hold on the nominee for Director of the National Security Agency until this information became public.25 25.See Letter from Ron Wyden, U.S. Sen., to Avril Haines, Dir. of Nat’l Intel. (Jan. 25, 2024), https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/signed_wyden_letter_to_dni_re_nsa_p‌urchase_of_domestic_metadata_and_ftc_order_on_data_brokers_with_attachments.pdf [https://perma.cc/EHJ8-69ZH]; Charlie Savage, N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says, N.Y. Times (Jan. 25, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/‌01/25/us/politics/nsa-internet-privacy-warrant.html [https://perma.cc/5GVM-RXXR].Show More

Despite the apparent urgency of these issues, little (if any) progress is being made, in large part—we believe—because legislators are simply uncertain how to proceed. That is where we seek to intervene. Relying on past congressional actions, we provide a roadmap for Congress, as well as state and local legislative bodies, as to the minimum requirements that must be in place before indiscriminate bulk data collection can continue. (And even then, as we say, there must be judicial review.)

Although our aspiration here is to suggest a path toward sound regulation, we are quite certain that absent the very basic rule-of-law requisites identified repeatedly by Congress, courts should invalidate all such indiscriminate collection as unconstitutional. It is difficult to understand how a court could uphold such activity given that, for the most part, we don’t even know what actually is happening. That is no doubt why courts, confronted with these issues, have tended to dispose of them on justiciability or other grounds rather than reaching the merits.26 26.See, e.g., ACLU v. Clapper, 785 F.3d 787, 823–24 (2d Cir. 2015) (declining to address whether the NSA’s bulk data collection pursuant to Section 215 violated the Fourth Amendment); Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 402, 414, 418 (2013) (dismissing for want of Article III standing the claim that § 1881a of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is unconstitutional); Schuchardt v. President of the United States, 802 F. App’x 69, 76–77 (3d Cir. 2020); Obama v. Klayman, 800 F.3d 559, 562 (D.C. Cir. 2015).Show More Still, it is unacceptable for courts simply to turn a blind eye to the degree of surveillance that is occurring. Our review of congressional debates, coupled with a constitutional argument one of us has advanced elsewhere, provides ample basis for striking down indiscriminate bulk data surveillance that is occurring in the absence of any regulation and without anything in the way of serious guardrails.27 27.See Barry Friedman, Lawless Surveillance, 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1143, 1204–14 (2022) (providing a constitutional argument of precisely this nature).Show More

On the other hand, the appropriate time to address the constitutionality of indiscriminate bulk data collection in the context of a specific legislative program is when the contours of that legislative program are known, including factors such as any evidence of the utility of the data collected, and the safeguards in place to protect individual interests.28 28.In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court barred warrantless collection of over six days of cell site location information, despite such collection ostensibly being permitted by the Stored Communications Act. 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2216–19 (2018). But the Court went no further. In that decision, the Chief Justice expressed the need to move cautiously, lest the Court “embarrass the future.” Id. at 2220 (quoting Nw. Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U.S. 292, 300 (1944)). Actual legislation will provide the Court with an opportunity to evaluate the specific protections it embodies, as well as government arguments about the utility of the data collected. See, e.g., Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 44 (1967) (evaluating constitutionality of wiretapping in context of New York’s law); see infra notes 332–40 and accompanying text (discussing how decisions like Berger have led to further legislation).Show More

Part I of this Article sets the stage by explaining that indiscriminate bulk data collection by domestic policing agencies is rampant and expanding at warp speed due to deepening public-private data partnerships. Section II.A details the profound data grab that is occurring and explains how, with the assistance of private helpers, law enforcement is accomplishing what it likely could not on its own. Section II.B makes the case that what is occurring may be but the tip of the iceberg. Law enforcement and their private partners are engaging in evasive (and dubiously constitutional) tactics to keep secret the fact that any of this is happening, making it impossible to know the true extent of the indiscriminate data surveillance.

Part II is the heart of our argument. It documents that when Congress has been forced to confront indiscriminate bulk data collection about innocent individuals by intelligence and policing agencies, it has registered sharp disapproval; Congress typically has shut down the collection. To the extent that the legislature allowed any mass access to data, the data was safeguarded with protections that often were understood to be foundational and perhaps required by the Constitution. To be clear, Congress has not always acted in the face of complaints about mass collection of private data. Public choice theory confirms what our own eyes see—caught between claims of national security and law enforcement imperatives (on the one hand), and popular unhappiness about private data collection (on the other), as well as its own keen awareness of the dangers, Congress often bends to pressure. But when Congress has been forced to act, indiscriminate bulk data collection about Americans suspected of nothing consistently has been deemed unlawful, of dubious constitutionality, and has been rejected. Congress has insisted instead on a set of quite obvious basic prerequisites, grounded in the rule of law. Part II traces this history up to the present day. Much of what we discuss in Part II concerns national security, which serves as a notable benchmark, because all concerned agreed that while certain surveillance activities may be permissible to protect national security, they are simply impermissible for domestic purposes.

Part III, relying on congressional insights of the past, turns to prescription for the present. Section III.A summarizes the rule-of-law requisites that surfaced repeatedly in congressional debates and actions, making abundantly clear that the ongoing domestic law enforcement data grab detailed in Part I violates these requisites. Indiscriminate data collection should not occur at all unless it is democratically authorized, transparent, based upon demonstrated efficacy, and bounded by essential safeguards to prevent things like discrimination, risks to personal security, and the accumulation of overweening governmental power. This goes for data collection conducted for the use of policing agencies at every level of government, federal, state, tribal, and local. Section III.B then tackles the hard question—which is how to make this happen in light of the game of hot potato that keeps both the judiciary and legislative bodies from doing their regulatory and adjudicative jobs. That Section identifies a set of mechanisms to address the problem. One is what historically has been a game of judicial / legislative give-and-take that allows each branch to push the other toward sensible resolutions. Another is a set of sunsets—coupled with disclosure requirements—to ensure periodic democratic review and reevaluation of data collection efforts to, among other things, weigh the efficacy and value of such collections against the intrusions they involve. The third is an intriguing, ongoing intercontinental game of chicken between the European Union and the United States that might accomplish the same, at least at the federal level.

Data, in our world, is a benefit and a curse. If we are not careful, the curse will trump the benefits in too many of our lives. Even if the threat is not immediately obvious, allowing government access to this much information about all of us is a prescription for tyranny. Eyes were opened by the idea that government could not only criminalize our reproductive lives but pry into our virtual and physical bedrooms and bathrooms to discover any criminality. That particular fear is justified, but the threats extend far beyond it. It is essential that we do something, now, about policing and intelligence agency’s massive indiscriminate collection of our personal data.

  1.  142 S. Ct. 2228, 2242–43 (2022); Philip Bump, The Patterns of Out-of-State Abortions, Wash. Post (Sept. 1, 2023, 4:48 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/01/‌patterns-out-of-state-abortions/ [https://perma.cc/F8ZP-36H2]. ↑
  2.  Rina Torchinsky, How Period Tracking Apps and Data Privacy Fit into a Post-Roe v. Wade Climate, NPR (June 24, 2022, 3:06 PM), https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1097482967/‌roe-v-wade-supreme-court-abortion-period-apps [https://perma.cc/4XCD-WTWQ]; Sara Morrison, Should I Delete My Period App? And Other Post-Roe Privacy Questions, Vox (July 6, 2022, 12:50 PM), https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/7/6/23196809/period-apps-roe-dobbs‌-data-privacy-abortion [https://perma.cc/3UCU-L2M8]. ↑
  3.  Jay Edelson, Post-Dobbs, Your Private Data Will Be Used Against You, Bloomberg News (Sept. 22, 2022, 4:00 AM), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/post-dobbs-your-pr‌ivate-data-will-be-used-against-you [https://perma.cc/E23W-DNMK]; see also Leah R. Fowler & Michael R. Ulrich, Femtechnodystopia, 75 Stan. L. Rev. 1233, 1237–38 (2023) (discussing how prosecutors and government officials could leverage consumer data to enforce abortion prohibitions or criminally prosecute users). ↑
  4.  Cat Zakrzewski, Pranshu Verma & Claire Parker, Texts, Web Searches About Abortion Have Been Used to Prosecute Women, Wash. Post (July 3, 2022, 9:20 AM), https://www.wash‌ingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/03/abortion-data-privacy-prosecution/ [https://perma.cc/‌UUB7-H9NS]. ↑
  5.  Ryan Phillips, Infant Death Case Heading Back to Grand Jury, Starkville Daily News (May 9, 2019), https://www.starkvilledailynews.com/infant-death-case-heading-back-to-gran‌d-jury/article_cf99bcb0-71cc-11e9-963a-eb5dc5052c92.html [https://perma.cc/D3Z9-39‌NR]; Grace Oldham & Dhruv Mehrotra, Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients, The Markup (June 15, 2022, 6:00 AM), https://th‌emarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/06/15/facebook-and-anti-abortion-clinics-are-collecting-highly‌-sensitive-info-on-would-be-patients [https://perma.cc/379S-92YA]. For Supreme Court cases expressing protection for intimate privacy, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 485–86 (1965) (identifying a right to privacy for couples seeking to procure contraception); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 568 (1969) (holding that the First and Fourth Amendments protect the possession of “obscene material”). ↑
  6.  Danielle Keats Citron, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age 58–63 (2022); see infra Part I. ↑
  7.  Gabby Miller, Transcript: Senate Hearing on Protecting Americans’ Privacy and the AI Accelerant, Tech Pol’y Press (July 12, 2024) (statement of Ryan Calo), https://www.techpol‌icy.press/transcript-senate-hearing-on-protecting-americans-privacy-and-the-ai-accelerant/ [https://perma.cc/Z87R-JXR5] (“AI is increasingly able to derive the intimate from the available.”); Alicia Solow-Niederman, Information Privacy and the Inference Economy, 117 Nw. U. L. Rev. 357, 361 (2022) (exploring the implications of machine learning tools’ ability to derive personal data from “aggregations of seemingly innocuous data”); see infra Part I. ↑
  8.  See, e.g., Carly Page, Hotel Giant Marriott Confirms Yet Another Data Breach, TechCrunch (July 6, 2022, 7:21 AM), https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/06/marriott-breach-ag‌ain/ [https://perma.cc/Q2HF-8P5S]; Andrew Leahey, Equifax, Experian Must Pay More Than Pennies for Data Breaches, Bloomberg Tax (Feb. 21, 2023, 4:45 AM), https://news.bloomber‌gtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/equifax-experian-must-pay-more-than-pennies-for-data-breaches [https://perma.cc/Q2HZ-HG5B]. ↑
  9.  Michael D. Birnhack & Niva Elkin-Koren, The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Environment, Va. J.L. & Tech., Summer 2003, at 1. ↑
  10.  On the ability to collect data in bulk and the economics of storing it, see Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think 6–12 (2013). ↑
  11.  See infra Part I. ↑
  12.  Id. ↑
  13.  See infra Part II. ↑
  14.  Citron, supra note 6, at xvi. ↑
  15.  See, e.g., Luke Barr, Americans Lost $10.3 Billion to Internet Scams in 2022, FBI Says, ABC News (Mar. 13, 2023, 4:27 PM), https://abcnews.go.com/Business/americans-lost-103-billion-internet-scams-2022-fbi/story?id=97832789 [https://perma.cc/7DQP-U9ZP]; Joshua Barlow, Naval Officer Charged with Harassment, Cyberstalking, Identity Theft Against Ex-Wife, WTOP News (Oct. 24, 2022, 4:59 AM), https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2022/10‌/naval-officer-charged-with-harassment-cyberstalking-identity-theft-against-ex-wife/ [https://perma.cc/6SP2-MBGR]; Farah Pandith & Jacob Ware, Teen Terrorism Inspired by Social Media Is on the Rise. Here’s What We Need to Do., NBC News (Mar. 22, 2021, 4:30 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/teen-terrorism-inspired-social-media-ris‌e-here-s-what-we-ncna1261307 [https://perma.cc/V62E-GVYS]; Rebecca Heilweil & Shirin Ghaffary, How Trump’s Internet Built and Broadcast the Capitol Insurrection, Vox (Jan. 8, 2021, 5:00 PM), https://www.vox.com/recode/22221285/trump-online-capitol-riot-far-right-parler-twitter-facebook [https://perma.cc/52NQ-5YZX]. ↑
  16.  See infra Part I. ↑
  17.  Id. ↑
  18.  The recent guidance to federal agencies by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) regarding the use of artificial intelligence is greatly consistent with much of what we argue for here. See Proposed Memorandum from Shalanda D. Young, Dir., Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, to the Heads of Exec. Dep’ts & Agencies, Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence 10, 16, 18, 22 (2023) (requiring public input, transparency, a showing of efficacy, and detailed safeguards, with hopefully narrow exceptions for some law enforcement and national security activity); accord Joy Buolamwini & Barry Friedman, How the Federal Government Can Rein in A.I. in Law Enforcement, N.Y. Times (Jan. 2, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/‌ai-police-regulation.html [https://perma.cc/4U5V-UVSJ] (acknowledging OMB’s requirements and urging closing of loopholes). ↑
  19.  Thanks to Noah Chauvin for enhancing our list of examples. ↑
  20.  In April of 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (“FAINFSA”) by a vote of 219-199. See H.R. 4639—Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4639/all-ac‌tions [https://perma.cc/Z8XL-6JC7] (last visited Sept. 7, 2024). This bill would flatly prohibit some of the practices we describe. Joseph Cox, Bill That Would Stop the Government Buying Data Without a Warrant Passes Key Hurdle, Vice (July 19, 2023, 11:19 AM), https://www.vic‌e.com/en/article/wxjgd4/fourth-amendment-is-not-for-sale-act-passes-committee [https://per‌ma.cc/GVB6-6KK7]. The Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, which incorporates FAINSFA in full, passed through the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 35-2. H.R. 6570, 118th Cong. (2023); see also H.R. 6570—Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act of 2023, Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-co‌ngress/house-bill/6570/all-actions-without-amendments [https://perma.cc/3XJS-Y9XC] (last visited May 15, 2024). The bipartisan, bicameral Government Surveillance Reform Act exceeds even FAINFSA in the information it would protect. H.R. 6262, 118th Cong. (2023); S. 3234, 118th Cong. (2023). The House of Representatives, by voice vote, adopted the Davidson-Jacobs Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would have prohibited the Department of Defense from purchasing U.S. persons’ protected information without a warrant. H.Amdt.256 to H.R. 2670, Congress.gov (July 14, 2023), https://www.cong‌ress.gov/amendment/118th-congress/house-amendment/256/text?s=3&r=5 [https://perma.cc/‌U8KM-X75W]. For an overview of the threat to privacy that data brokers present and an evaluation of certain legislative proposals, see Emile Ayoub & Elizabeth Goitein, Closing the Data Broker Loophole, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (Feb. 13, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/‌our-work/research-reports/closing-data-broker-loophole [https://perma.cc/S3H5-5T7U]. ↑
  21.  See Biden Signs Reauthorization of Surveillance Program into Law Despite Privacy Concerns, NPR (Apr. 20, 2024, 9:54 PM), https://www.npr.org/2024/‌04/20/1246‌076114/sen‌ate-passes-reauthorization-surveillance-program-fisa [https://perma.cc/M5XF-LV5R] (“The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.”); see also Preston Marquis & Molly E. Reynolds, House Passes Section 702 Reauthorization, Lawfare (Apr. 16, 2024, 12:59 PM), https://www.lawfaremedia‌.org/article/house-passes-section-702-reauthorization [https://perma.cc/78RP-RGB8] (describing the two-year reauthorization as a “key concession” to ensure the bill’s passage). ↑
  22.  On the nature of the reforms, see infra notes 252–56. A commission was established to “consider ongoing reforms.” Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, Pub. L. No. 118-49, § 18(c), 138 Stat. 885 (2024) (codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. § 1881a); see also David Aaron, Unpacking the FISA Section 702 Reauthorization Bill, Just Sec. (Apr. 18, 2024), https://www.justsecurity.org/94771/unpacking-the-fisa-section-702-reauthorization-bill/ [https://perma.cc/XE4T-MVM3]. The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, acknowledged drafting problems with the reauthorization bill and promised to work towards improvements this summer. Noah Chauvin, Too Much Power for Spy Agencies, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (Apr. 23, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opi‌nion/too-much-power-spy-agencies [https://perma.cc/J438-M9P9]. One upshot of the fight was that the FISA reform bill will come to the House floor for passage by simple majority, rather than requiring a two-thirds vote as leadership originally had planned. See Marquis & Reynolds, supra note 21. ↑
  23.  Off. of the Dir. of Nat’l Intel., Senior Advisory Grp., Panel on Commercially Available Info., Report to the Director of National Intelligence 2 (Jan. 27, 2022) [hereinafter ODNI Report], https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Repor‌t-on-CAI-January2022.pdf [https://perma.cc/69EZ-2NK2]. ↑
  24.  Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Order Prohibits Data Broker X-Mode Social and Outlogic from Selling Sensitive Location Data (Jan. 9, 2024), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/ftc-order-prohibits-data-broker-x-mode-social-outlogic-selling-sensitive-location-data [https://perma.cc/2RNF-JBTP]. On May 1, 2024, the FTC released its final order against InMarket in which it prohibited the data aggregator from sharing or selling sensitive location data for advertising and marketing purposes. Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Finalizes Order with InMarket Prohibiting It from Selling or Sharing Precise Location Data (May 1, 2024), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/pre‌ss-releases/2024/05/ftc-finalizes-order-inmarket-prohibiting-it-selling-or-sharing-precise-loc‌ation-data [https://perma.cc/B6XR-578H]. ↑
  25.  See Letter from Ron Wyden, U.S. Sen., to Avril Haines, Dir. of Nat’l Intel. (Jan. 25, 2024), https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/signed_wyden_letter_to_dni_re_nsa_p‌urchase_of_domestic_metadata_and_ftc_order_on_data_brokers_with_attachments.pdf [https://perma.cc/EHJ8-69ZH]; Charlie Savage, N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says, N.Y. Times (Jan. 25, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/‌01/25/us/politics/nsa-internet-privacy-warrant.html [https://perma.cc/5GVM-RXXR]. ↑
  26.  See, e.g., ACLU v. Clapper, 785 F.3d 787, 823–24 (2d Cir. 2015) (declining to address whether the NSA’s bulk data collection pursuant to Section 215 violated the Fourth Amendment); Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 402, 414, 418 (2013) (dismissing for want of Article III standing the claim that § 1881a of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is unconstitutional); Schuchardt v. President of the United States, 802 F. App’x 69, 76–77 (3d Cir. 2020); Obama v. Klayman, 800 F.3d 559, 562 (D.C. Cir. 2015). ↑
  27.  See Barry Friedman, Lawless Surveillance, 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1143, 1204–14 (2022) (providing a constitutional argument of precisely this nature). ↑

  28.  In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court barred warrantless collection of over six days of cell site location information, despite such collection ostensibly being permitted by the Stored Communications Act. 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2216–19 (2018). But the Court went no further. In that decision, the Chief Justice expressed the need to move cautiously, lest the Court “embarrass the future.” Id. at 2220 (quoting Nw. Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U.S. 292, 300 (1944)). Actual legislation will provide the Court with an opportunity to evaluate the specific protections it embodies, as well as government arguments about the utility of the data collected. See, e.g., Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 44 (1967) (evaluating constitutionality of wiretapping in context of New York’s law); see infra notes 332–40 and accompanying text (discussing how decisions like Berger have led to further legislation). ↑

In Tribute: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

On the occasion of Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson’s fortieth year on the bench, these Essays honor his contributions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, to American law, and to the lives of his clerks and colleagues.

FOREWORD
 Jay Wilkinson as Teacher ……………………….. John C. Jeffries, Jr.       248

ESSAYS

Judge Wilkinson’s First Amendment:                     Dan Richardson
     Safeguarding the Democratic Process ………….Leslie Kendrick      250

The Judge ………………………………………….. Judge Daniel A. Bress      261

Prudence, Role Morality, and
    Restraint: Judge Wilkinson                    Katherine Mims Crocker
    on the Separation of Powers ………………………. Jack Goldsmith       269

Learning to Disagree Agreeably ……………….. Allison Orr Larsen        283

The “New” Drug War

American policymakers have long waged a costly, punitive, racist, and ineffective drug war that casts certain drug use as immoral and those who engage in it as deviant criminals. The War on Drugs has been defined by a myopic focus on controlling the supply of drugs that are labeled as dangerous and addictive. The decisions as to which drugs fall within these categories have neither been made by health agencies nor based on scientific evidence. Instead, law enforcement agencies have been at the helm of the drug war advocating for and enforcing prohibition.

The drug war has been a failure on all counts. American taxpayers have invested trillions of dollars in the war, yet the United States continues to witness record-setting numbers of drug overdose deaths every year. The drug war has been used as a tool to disenfranchise and incarcerate generations of individuals minoritized as Black. Black Americans are nearly six times more likely to be incarcerated for drug-related offenses than their white counterparts, notwithstanding that substance use rates are comparable across those populations.

The public rhetoric concerning drug use has notably changed in recent years. Many policymakers have replaced the punitive, law-and-order narratives of the Old Drug War with progressive, public-health-oriented language, which suggests that the Old Drug War has ended. We, however, caution against such a conclusion. This paper examines three categories of laws and policies that attend to individuals who use drugs under our country’s new, and purportedly public-health-centric, approach: (1) laws that increase surveillance of certain drugs or those who use them; (2) the criminalization and civil punishment of the symptoms or behaviors related to drug use; and (3) laws that decrease access to treatment and harm reduction programs.

Our assessment of these policies demonstrates that the War on Drugs is not over. It has merely been retooled, recalibrated, and reframed. The “New” Drug War may be concealed with public-health-promoting rhetoric, but it is largely an insidious re-entrenchment of the country’s longstanding, punitive approach to drug use.

Introduction

Since the 1800s, American policymakers have waged a racist,1 1.andré douglas pond cummings & Steven A. Ramirez, Roadmap for Anti-Racism: First Unwind the War on Drugs Now, 96 Tul. L. Rev. 469, 469–70 (2022) (“The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans.” (footnotes omitted)); Paul Butler, Chokehold: Policing Black Men 122 (2017) (noting “that ‘the war on drugs’ has been selectively waged against African Americans. . . . For drug crimes, African Americans are about 13 percent of people who do the crime, but about 60 percent of people who do the time.”).Show More costly,2 2.Juhohn Lee, America Has Spent Over a Trillion Dollars Fighting the War on Drugs. 50 Years Later, Drug Use in the U.S. Is Climbing Again, CNBC (June 17, 2021, 1:15 PM), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-d‌rugs.html [https://perma.cc/9BAL-Y45A].Show More and punitive3 3.Nkechi Taifa, Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (May 10, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mas‌s-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs [https://perma.cc/54XD-6FGH] (explaining how increasingly punitive drug “laws flooded the federal system with people convicted of low-level and nonviolent drug offenses”); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 6–11 (rev. ed. 2020) (detailing how the War on Drugs led to mass incarceration).Show More drug war that characterizes some drug use as morally reprehensible behavior and those who engage in it as deviant criminals.4 4.Taleed El-Sabawi, Defining the Opioid Epidemic: Congress, Pressure Groups, and Problem Definition, 48 U. Mem. L. Rev. 1357, 1390–91 (2018) [hereinafter El-Sabawi, Defining the Opioid Epidemic].Show More The War on Drugs5 5.Michael Tonry, Race and the War on Drugs, 1994 U. Chi. Legal F. 25, 25‒26 (1994) (defining the War on Drugs as an initiative reinforced by the Reagan and Bush Administrations to reduce drug trade and use by means of education and treatment components with much emphasis on law enforcement).Show More myopically focuses on controlling the supply of drugs deemed dangerous and addictive through prohibition and deterring their sale and possession through arrest and incarceration.6 6.Taleed El-Sabawi & Jennifer Oliva, The Influence of White Exceptionalism on Drug War Discourse, 94 Temp. L. Rev. 649, 649 (2022); see David T. Courtwright, A Century of American Narcotic Policy, in 2 Treating Drug Problems 1, 42 (Dean R. Gerstein & Henrick J. Harwood eds., 1992) (“The sense that illicit drug trafficking and use were out of control led to the present war on drugs.”); Mona Lynch, Theorizing the Role of the ‘War on Drugs’ in US Punishment, 16 Theoretical Criminology 175, 178–79 (2012) (describing specific legislation that criminally punishes both possession and sale of drugs based on “their combined medical value, harmfulness to health, and addictive properties”).Show More American government officials’ simplistic justifications for centering drug policy around supply control include their commitment to the notion that people only use drugs because they are available and, once they are no longer available, people will neither initiate nor continue drug use.7 7.Nat’l Rsch. Council, Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us 139 (Charles F. Manski, John V. Pepper & Carol V. Petrie eds., 2001).Show More

Upon superficial examination, limiting access to potentially dangerous drugs sounds like a promising approach to address drug misuse and poisoning problems. A litany of actual evidence, however, suggests that supply control measures steeped in criminal legal theories of deterrence are ineffective at decreasing overdoses and substance use disorders.8 8.See, e.g., Ojmarrh Mitchell, Ineffectiveness, Financial Waste, and Unfairness: The Legacy of the War on Drugs, 32 J. Crime & Just. 1, 7–10 (2009); Evan Wood et al., Impact of Supply-Side Policies for Control of Illicit Drugs in the Face of the AIDS and Overdose Epidemics: Investigation of a Massive Heroin Seizure, 168 Canadian Med. Ass’n J. 165, 168 (2003).Show More This is because those tactics fail to address any of the underlying causes of drug demand, facilitate an unpredictable and ever more dangerous drug supply, and often result in the substitution of one drug for another, more potent drug.9 9.Leo Beletsky & Corey S. Davis, Today’s Fentanyl Crisis: Prohibition’s Iron Law, Revisited, 46 Int’l J. Drug Pol’y 156, 156–58 (2017); see also Johanna Catherine Maclean, Justine Mallatt, Christopher J. Ruhm & Kosali Simon, Economic Studies on the Opioid Crisis: A Review 1, 15, 19 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 28067, 2021), https://w‌ww.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28067/w28067.pdf [https://perma.cc/FRN9-D7‌WB] (explaining that opioid “overdose deaths rose 9.1 percent from March 2019 to March 2020” despite “policy efforts to address the crisis,” certain prescription drug monitoring programs “lead[] to increased heroin-related crime,” and that other programs addressing OxyContin misuse “spurred development of illicit drug markets”); Meghan Peterson et al., “One Guy Goes to Jail, Two People Are Ready to Take His Spot”: Perspectives on Drug-Induced Homicide Laws Among Incarcerated Individuals, 70 Int’l J. Drug Pol’y 47, 52 (2019) (concluding that drug policies were “not . . . effective in mitigating overdose risk and could induce harm” instead).Show More

Interdiction efforts alone have cost American taxpayers more than a trillion dollars over the last several decades.10 10.Christopher J. Coyne & Abigail R. Hall, Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs, 811 Cato Inst. Pol’y Analysis, Apr. 2017, at 1, 19, https://www.ca‌to.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-811-updated.pdf [https://perma.cc/LA3Z-VSUU].Show More Federal, state, and local governments spend an estimated 47.9 billion dollars annually on drug enforcement.11 11.Jeffery Miron, The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition, 83 Cato Inst. Tax & Budget Bull., July 23, 2018, https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-bulletin/budgetary-effects-endi‌ng-drug-prohibition [https://perma.cc/WN7F-PRPQ].Show More Despite the substantial funding dedicated to the War on Drugs, American overdose deaths have reached historic levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States suffered a record 107,941 overdose deaths—the highest number of such fatalities ever cataloged in a single calendar year—in 2022.12 12.Merianne R. Spencer, Matthew F. Garnett & Arialdi M. Miniño, Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2002–2022, 491 Nat’l Ctr. Health Stats. Data Brief 1, 1 (Mar. 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db491.pdf [https://perma.cc/5Q7J-4BBR]; Deidre McPhillips, US Drug Overdose Deaths, Fueled by Synthetic Opioids, Hit a New High in 2022, CNN (May 18, 2023, 11:27 AM), https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/health/drug-overdose-de‌aths-2022 [https://perma.cc/34SG-S3S7].Show More

The War on Drugs is not only costly. It has failed to mitigate both the escalating drug overdose deaths and the myriad poor health outcomes associated with chaotic drug use.13 13.Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard, The Beginner’s Guide to Harm Reduction, Healthline (Aug. 30, 2021), https://www.healthline.com/health/substance-use/harm-reduction [https://perma.‌cc/KEH6-LRH8] (explaining that substance use is experienced on a spectrum that varies from managed to chaotic use and defining chaotic use as “consumption [that] is no longer bound by self-regulation” where “the negative effects on [an individual’s] life outweigh the original benefits . . . from consuming drugs”).Show More The War on Drugs is also racist.14 14.See, e.g., John Hudak, Biden Should End America’s Longest War: The War on Drugs, Brookings Inst. (Sept. 24, 2021), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-should-end-ame‌ricas-longest-war-the-war-on-drugs/ [https://perma.cc/GCK7-JEAW] (“Despite its dramatic policy failures, the War on Drugs has been wildly successful in one specific area: institutionalizing racism. The drug war was built on a foundation of racism and xenophobia.”).Show More In 2016, one of President Nixon’s top aides admitted that the War on Drugs was motived by Nixon’s desire to subordinate and disenfranchise Black persons and the antiwar left, whom Nixon identified as political enemies.15 15.Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs, Harper’s Mag. (Apr. 2016), https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ [https://perma.cc/W73S-PTNX]. Moreover, the harshness of the criminal penalties associated with a drug’s possession have been driven not by the “dangerousness” of the drug so much as the racial characteristics associated with the people who use that substance. Kenneth B. Nunn, Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the “War on Drugs” Was a “War on Blacks,” 6 J. Gender, Race & Just. 381, 396–98 (2002) (explaining that the dramatic federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine was unjustified from a physiological perspective because each is simply a different form of the same drug and that, instead, the dramatically more harsh criminal penalties that attended to crack cocaine were based on its use association with Black people (and, concomitantly, that the relatively less harsh criminal penalties that attended to powder cocaine were based on its use association with white people)); Brittany Arsiniega, Teresa Cosby, Spencer Richardson & Kylie Berube, Race and Prohibition Movements, 11 Tenn. J. Race, Gender & Soc. Just. 16, 19 (2021) (“Those drugs associated with minorities have been viewed by governmental majorities (and the public at large) as more harmful or dangerous than those consumed by white people and criminalized accordingly. Examples include crack cocaine versus powder cocaine and consumption of opium by smoking (associated with Chinese immigrants) versus oral consumption (associated with white people).” (footnotes omitted)).Show More The War on Drugs is, and always has been, fueled by stereotypical myths, racist beliefs, and a desire for political and societal control of racial minorities and others opposed to failed law and order-driven drug policies.16 16.See, e.g., Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland & David Herzberg, Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America 36, 59 (2023) [hereinafter Hansen et al., Whiteout] (explaining that “[i]nherent in the effort of . . . policy makers . . . to distinguish licit from illicit drugs is an unspoken racial symbolism of white biology and Black crime” and “[f]or the last fifty years, . . . policy makers have invested heavily in the association between Black and Brown communities and illicit drug use and have used the threat of drugs to ramp up fears about Black and Brown people and to craft increasingly punitive policies that have been effective tools of racial targeting and control”).Show More

Evidenced by the framing of the current overdose crisis as a public health issue rather than a criminal legal problem, some argue that the War on Drugs is on the wane.17 17.Brian Mann, After 50 Years of the War on Drugs, ‘What Good Is It Doing for Us?’, NPR (June 17, 2021, 5:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1006495476/after-50-years-of-th‌e-war-on-drugs-what-good-is-it-doing-for-us [https://perma.cc/79UT-CQ2A] (contending that, in response to the current overdose crisis, “some of the most severe policies implemented during the drug war are being scaled back or scrapped altogether” “[i]n many parts of the U.S.,” while admitting that “much of the drug war’s architecture remains intact”).Show More There is no doubt that the rhetoric that drives the drug war has changed in recent years as policymakers have adopted “health-oriented” language to describe what has been popularly characterized as the “opioid overdose crisis.”18 18.Taleed El-Sabawi, The Role of Pressure Groups and Problem Definition in Crafting Legislative Solutions to the Opioid Crisis, 11 Ne. U. L. Rev. 372, 380, 395 (2019) (finding that a health-oriented approach was used by pressure groups during congressional hearings on the opioid crisis from 2014–2016); see also Max Weiss & Michael Zoorob, Political Frames of Public Health Crises: Discussing the Opioid Epidemic in the US Congress, 281 Soc. Sci. & Med., 2021, at 1, 4–7 (describing the steady rise of overdoses as an “opioid-epidemic” and the responses from the U.S. Congress).Show More A common refrain from both policymakers and law enforcement has been: “We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis.”19 19.See, e.g., Nabarun Dasgupta, We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of Overdose: The Drug Bust Paradox, 113 Am. J. Pub. Health 708, 708 (2023) (explaining that “[i]n speaking with police about preventing overdose, the officers’ common refrain is ‘We aren’t going to arrest our way out of this’”); Press Release, Dick Durbin, Sen., U.S. Senate, Durbin, Duckworth Announce $1.2 Million for Kane County Diversion Program (Dec. 22, 2021), https://www.durbin.sen‌ate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-duckworth-announce-12-million-for-kane-county-d‌iversion-program [https://perma.cc/ULU7-2EG5] (stating “we can’t arrest our way out of” the overdose crisis); Andrea Cipriano, Rural Sheriffs: ‘We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of the Opioid Crisis,’ Crime Rep. (Jan. 20, 2021), https://thecrimereport.org/2021/01/20/rural-sheri‌ffs-we-cant-arrest-our-way-out-of-the-opioid-crisis/ [https://perma.cc/NXV9-U5Y3].Show More This change in framing is due, at least in part, to the rampant whitewashing of prescription opioid misuse.20 20.See generally Julie Netherland & Helena B. Hansen, The War on Drugs That Wasn’t: Wasted Whiteness, “Dirty Doctors,” and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuse, 40 Cult. Med. & Psych. 664 (2016) (maintaining that when people who use drugs are depicted as white, the policy proposals presented are more likely to be public-health-centered than punitive).Show More Moreover, given that Congress has enacted at least two significant pieces of legislation since 2016 to address the crisis that include provisions that are predominantly health-centric,21 21.See generally Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-198, 130 Stat. 695 (prescribing training for first responders, additional addiction treatment for veterans and families, expanding the education and prevention policies, and other methods to fight the opioid crisis); Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act, Pub. L. No. 115-271, 132 Stat. 3894 (2018) (expanding Medicaid and Medicare provisions “to address the opioid crisis”).Show More perhaps the dominant and most visible political response to the “opioid crisis” was a “[w]ar on [d]rugs [t]hat [w]asn’t.”22 22.Julie Netherland & Helena Hansen, White Opioids: Pharmaceutical Race and the War on Drugs That Wasn’t, 12 Biosocieties 217, 217 (2017).Show More

We nonetheless caution against any conclusion that the War on Drugs has ended. It has not. It has merely been retooled, recalibrated, and reframed by health-centric rhetoric. New policy proposals aimed at addressing the current overdose crisis may appear more public-health-oriented, and we concede that some are,23 23.For example, in 2021, for the first time in history, former Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Regina LaBelle included harm reduction (a public health approach to addressing chaotic drug use defined by meeting people where they are and striving to reduce the health harms of drug use) as one of the executive branch’s strategic priorities to address overdose deaths. Press Release, Regina LaBelle, Acting Director, White House Office of Nat’l Drug Control Pol’y, Statement from Acting Director Regina LaBelle on Today’s CDC Overdose Death Data (Oct. 13, 2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/20‌21/10/13/statement-from-acting-director-regina-labelle-on-todays-cdc-overdose-death-data-4/ [https://perma.cc/83DB-URSX].Show More but an insidious re-entrenchment of the punitive approach to drug use walks in lockstep with those highly publicized public health measures.

Part I of this Article provides an overview of the key features of the Old Drug War with an emphasis on the racism endemic to its purposes. Part II enumerates the extravagant failures of the punitive, supply-side-centric Old Drug War, explaining why its tactics ensure an increasingly dangerous and deadly American drug supply. Part III of this Article deploys three categories of recent laws and policies to demonstrate that the United States persists in waging a punitive and predominantly supply-side War on Drugs cloaked in health-oriented rhetoric.

Part III proceeds in three Sections. Section III.A gives an overview of state laws that provide law enforcement with new data and evidence for criminal prosecution through enhanced controlled substance surveillance. While policymakers have couched such surveillance as an effort to improve health outcomes, it has motivated a marked decrease in the prescribing of opioid analgesics and, as a result, driven many patients in legitimate medical need of such prescription drugs to the illicit (and more dangerous) market. Increased surveillance has been accompanied by the highly publicized prosecution of prescribers, a chilling effect on providers, and the neglect and abandonment of patients in chronic and intractable pain. Such patients are frequently labeled as drug-seekers and deviants unworthy of treatment in the American health care system. We further detail how the algorithms purportedly used to quantify patient drug use risks are steeped with racial and gender prejudice and discriminate against individuals with disabilities.

Section III.B delineates and analyzes certain criminal and civil punishment enhancements of the New Drug War. It explains that several states have enacted new criminal laws that make it easier to charge persons with drug-induced homicide (“DIH”) for overdose deaths and posits that the aggressive enforcement of such laws may lead to an increase in drug-related fatalities and disparately impact individuals minoritized as Black. This Section also points to the federal government’s recent use of fentanyl-related product scheduling to enhance the criminal penalties for drug use and distribution. Section III.B concludes by elaborating on the significant civil collateral consequences experienced by individuals who use drugs due to punitive child welfare and drug testing laws and policies.

Section III.C explains how New Drug War policies continue to create obstacles to evidence-based treatment and harm reduction resources for individuals who use drugs. This Section explains that policymakers remain resistant to reducing the numerous and burdensome federal laws and policies that govern access to opioid use disorder (“OUD”) medications—the gold-standard treatment for OUD—and contends that those policies exacerbate the country’s escalating overdose crisis. This Section further details America’s ongoing battles against and opposition to the operation and funding of two specific evidenced-based harm reduction programs that have been proven effective in reducing overdose fatalities and the health and safety harms associated with drug use: syringe services programs and overdose prevention centers.

The three categories of “New” Drug War laws and policies that are showcased in Part III of this article—enhanced surveillance, enhanced criminalization and civil punishment, and ongoing obstacles to treatment and harm reduction—demonstrate that our “New” Drug War is simply an extension of its predecessor disguised by a public health promotional campaign. Simply stated, the popularity of a predominantly punitive, supply-side, law-enforcement-centric drug policy approach persists despite ample evidence that its core tactics are woefully ineffective. Before diving into a discussion about the very familiar characteristics of our “New” Drug War, we turn first to an overview of the old one, which is provided in the following Part.

  1.  andré douglas pond cummings & Steven A. Ramirez, Roadmap for Anti-Racism: First Unwind the War on Drugs Now, 96 Tul. L. Rev. 469, 469–70 (2022) (“The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans.” (footnotes omitted)); Paul Butler, Chokehold: Policing Black Men 122 (2017) (noting “that ‘the war on drugs’ has been selectively waged against African Americans. . . . For drug crimes, African Americans are about 13 percent of people who do the crime, but about 60 percent of people who do the time.”). ↑
  2.  Juhohn Lee, America Has Spent Over a Trillion Dollars Fighting the War on Drugs. 50 Years Later, Drug Use in the U.S. Is Climbing Again, CNBC (June 17, 2021, 1:15 PM), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-d‌rugs.html [https://perma.cc/9BAL-Y45A]. ↑
  3.  Nkechi Taifa, Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs, Brennan Ctr. for Just. (May 10, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mas‌s-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs [https://perma.cc/54XD-6FGH] (explaining how increasingly punitive drug “laws flooded the federal system with people convicted of low-level and nonviolent drug offenses”); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 6–11 (rev. ed. 2020) (detailing how the War on Drugs led to mass incarceration). ↑
  4.  Taleed El-Sabawi, Defining the Opioid Epidemic: Congress, Pressure Groups, and Problem Definition, 48 U. Mem. L. Rev. 1357, 1390–91 (2018) [hereinafter El-Sabawi, Defining the Opioid Epidemic]. ↑
  5.  Michael Tonry, Race and the War on Drugs, 1994 U. Chi. Legal F. 25, 25‒26 (1994) (defining the War on Drugs as an initiative reinforced by the Reagan and Bush Administrations to reduce drug trade and use by means of education and treatment components with much emphasis on law enforcement). ↑
  6.  Taleed El-Sabawi & Jennifer Oliva, The Influence of White Exceptionalism on Drug War Discourse, 94 Temp. L. Rev. 649, 649 (2022); see David T. Courtwright, A Century of American Narcotic Policy, in 2 Treating Drug Problems 1, 42 (Dean R. Gerstein & Henrick J. Harwood eds., 1992) (“The sense that illicit drug trafficking and use were out of control led to the present war on drugs.”); Mona Lynch, Theorizing the Role of the ‘War on Drugs’ in US Punishment, 16 Theoretical Criminology 175, 178–79 (2012) (describing specific legislation that criminally punishes both possession and sale of drugs based on “their combined medical value, harmfulness to health, and addictive properties”). ↑
  7.  Nat’l Rsch. Council, Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us 139 (Charles F. Manski, John V. Pepper & Carol V. Petrie eds., 2001). ↑
  8.  See, e.g., Ojmarrh Mitchell, Ineffectiveness, Financial Waste, and Unfairness: The Legacy of the War on Drugs, 32 J. Crime & Just. 1, 7–10 (2009); Evan Wood et al., Impact of Supply-Side Policies for Control of Illicit Drugs in the Face of the AIDS and Overdose Epidemics: Investigation of a Massive Heroin Seizure, 168 Canadian Med. Ass’n J. 165, 168 (2003). ↑
  9.  Leo Beletsky & Corey S. Davis, Today’s Fentanyl Crisis: Prohibition’s Iron Law, Revisited, 46 Int’l J. Drug Pol’y 156, 156–58 (2017); see also Johanna Catherine Maclean, Justine Mallatt, Christopher J. Ruhm & Kosali Simon, Economic Studies on the Opioid Crisis: A Review 1, 15, 19 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 28067, 2021), https://w‌ww.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28067/w28067.pdf [https://perma.cc/FRN9-D7‌WB] (explaining that opioid “overdose deaths rose 9.1 percent from March 2019 to March 2020” despite “policy efforts to address the crisis,” certain prescription drug monitoring programs “lead[] to increased heroin-related crime,” and that other programs addressing OxyContin misuse “spurred development of illicit drug markets”); Meghan Peterson et al., “One Guy Goes to Jail, Two People Are Ready to Take His Spot”: Perspectives on Drug-Induced Homicide Laws Among Incarcerated Individuals, 70 Int’l J. Drug Pol’y 47, 52 (2019) (concluding that drug policies were “not . . . effective in mitigating overdose risk and could induce harm” instead). ↑
  10.  Christopher J. Coyne & Abigail R. Hall, Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs, 811 Cato Inst. Pol’y Analysis, Apr. 2017, at 1, 19, https://www.ca‌to.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-811-updated.pdf [https://perma.cc/LA3Z-VSUU]. ↑
  11.  Jeffery Miron, The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition, 83 Cato Inst. Tax & Budget Bull., July 23, 2018, https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-bulletin/budgetary-effects-endi‌ng-drug-prohibition [https://perma.cc/WN7F-PRPQ]. ↑
  12.  Merianne R. Spencer, Matthew F. Garnett & Arialdi M. Miniño, Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2002–2022, 491 Nat’l Ctr. Health Stats. Data Brief 1, 1 (Mar. 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db491.pdf [https://perma.cc/5Q7J-4BBR]; Deidre McPhillips, US Drug Overdose Deaths, Fueled by Synthetic Opioids, Hit a New High in 2022, CNN (May 18, 2023, 11:27 AM), https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/health/drug-overdose-de‌aths-2022 [https://perma.cc/34SG-S3S7]. ↑
  13.  Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard, The Beginner’s Guide to Harm Reduction, Healthline (Aug. 30, 2021), https://www.healthline.com/health/substance-use/harm-reduction [https://perma.‌cc/KEH6-LRH8] (explaining that substance use is experienced on a spectrum that varies from managed to chaotic use and defining chaotic use as “consumption [that] is no longer bound by self-regulation” where “the negative effects on [an individual’s] life outweigh the original benefits . . . from consuming drugs”). ↑
  14.  See, e.g., John Hudak, Biden Should End America’s Longest War: The War on Drugs, Brookings Inst. (Sept. 24, 2021), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-should-end-ame‌ricas-longest-war-the-war-on-drugs/ [https://perma.cc/GCK7-JEAW] (“Despite its dramatic policy failures, the War on Drugs has been wildly successful in one specific area: institutionalizing racism. The drug war was built on a foundation of racism and xenophobia.”). ↑
  15.  Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs, Harper’s Mag. (Apr. 2016), https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ [https://perma.cc/W73S-PTNX]. Moreover, the harshness of the criminal penalties associated with a drug’s possession have been driven not by the “dangerousness” of the drug so much as the racial characteristics associated with the people who use that substance. Kenneth B. Nunn, Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the “War on Drugs” Was a “War on Blacks,” 6 J. Gender, Race & Just. 381, 396–98 (2002) (explaining that the dramatic federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine was unjustified from a physiological perspective because each is simply a different form of the same drug and that, instead, the dramatically more harsh criminal penalties that attended to crack cocaine were based on its use association with Black people (and, concomitantly, that the relatively less harsh criminal penalties that attended to powder cocaine were based on its use association with white people)); Brittany Arsiniega, Teresa Cosby, Spencer Richardson & Kylie Berube, Race and Prohibition Movements, 11 Tenn. J. Race, Gender & Soc. Just. 16, 19 (2021) (“Those drugs associated with minorities have been viewed by governmental majorities (and the public at large) as more harmful or dangerous than those consumed by white people and criminalized accordingly. Examples include crack cocaine versus powder cocaine and consumption of opium by smoking (associated with Chinese immigrants) versus oral consumption (associated with white people).” (footnotes omitted)). ↑
  16.  See, e.g., Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland & David Herzberg, Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America 36, 59 (2023) [hereinafter Hansen et al., Whiteout] (explaining that “[i]nherent in the effort of . . . policy makers . . . to distinguish licit from illicit drugs is an unspoken racial symbolism of white biology and Black crime” and “[f]or the last fifty years, . . . policy makers have invested heavily in the association between Black and Brown communities and illicit drug use and have used the threat of drugs to ramp up fears about Black and Brown people and to craft increasingly punitive policies that have been effective tools of racial targeting and control”). ↑
  17.  Brian Mann, After 50 Years of the War on Drugs, ‘What Good Is It Doing for Us?’, NPR (June 17, 2021, 5:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1006495476/after-50-years-of-th‌e-war-on-drugs-what-good-is-it-doing-for-us [https://perma.cc/79UT-CQ2A] (contending that, in response to the current overdose crisis, “some of the most severe policies implemented during the drug war are being scaled back or scrapped altogether” “[i]n many parts of the U.S.,” while admitting that “much of the drug war’s architecture remains intact”). ↑
  18.  Taleed El-Sabawi, The Role of Pressure Groups and Problem Definition in Crafting Legislative Solutions to the Opioid Crisis, 11 Ne. U. L. Rev. 372, 380, 395 (2019) (finding that a health-oriented approach was used by pressure groups during congressional hearings on the opioid crisis from 2014–2016); see also Max Weiss & Michael Zoorob, Political Frames of Public Health Crises: Discussing the Opioid Epidemic in the US Congress, 281 Soc. Sci. & Med., 2021, at 1, 4–7 (describing the steady rise of overdoses as an “opioid-epidemic” and the responses from the U.S. Congress). ↑
  19.  See, e.g., Nabarun Dasgupta, We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of Overdose: The Drug Bust Paradox, 113 Am. J. Pub. Health 708, 708 (2023) (explaining that “[i]n speaking with police about preventing overdose, the officers’ common refrain is ‘We aren’t going to arrest our way out of this’”); Press Release, Dick Durbin, Sen., U.S. Senate, Durbin, Duckworth Announce $1.2 Million for Kane County Diversion Program (Dec. 22, 2021), https://www.durbin.sen‌ate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-duckworth-announce-12-million-for-kane-county-d‌iversion-program [https://perma.cc/ULU7-2EG5] (stating “we can’t arrest our way out of” the overdose crisis); Andrea Cipriano, Rural Sheriffs: ‘We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of the Opioid Crisis,’ Crime Rep. (Jan. 20, 2021), https://thecrimereport.org/2021/01/20/rural-sheri‌ffs-we-cant-arrest-our-way-out-of-the-opioid-crisis/ [https://perma.cc/NXV9-U5Y3]. ↑
  20.  See generally Julie Netherland & Helena B. Hansen, The War on Drugs That Wasn’t: Wasted Whiteness, “Dirty Doctors,” and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuse, 40 Cult. Med. & Psych. 664 (2016) (maintaining that when people who use drugs are depicted as white, the policy proposals presented are more likely to be public-health-centered than punitive). ↑
  21.  See generally Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-198, 130 Stat. 695 (prescribing training for first responders, additional addiction treatment for veterans and families, expanding the education and prevention policies, and other methods to fight the opioid crisis); Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act, Pub. L. No. 115-271, 132 Stat. 3894 (2018) (expanding Medicaid and Medicare provisions “to address the opioid crisis”). ↑
  22.  Julie Netherland & Helena Hansen, White Opioids: Pharmaceutical Race and the War on Drugs That Wasn’t, 12 Biosocieties 217, 217 (2017). ↑

  23.  For example, in 2021, for the first time in history, former Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Regina LaBelle included harm reduction (a public health approach to addressing chaotic drug use defined by meeting people where they are and striving to reduce the health harms of drug use) as one of the executive branch’s strategic priorities to address overdose deaths. Press Release, Regina LaBelle, Acting Director, White House Office of Nat’l Drug Control Pol’y, Statement from Acting Director Regina LaBelle on Today’s CDC Overdose Death Data (Oct. 13, 2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/20‌21/10/13/statement-from-acting-director-regina-labelle-on-todays-cdc-overdose-death-data-4/ [https://perma.cc/83DB-URSX]. ↑

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