Did government agencies create the drug crisis, or shape it in other ways?

“Started the epidemic” is a very sweeping claim. To assess it, you’d need evidence tying specific agency decisions to particular drugs, places, and periods, then showing how those decisions caused the wider crisis. Evidence of misconduct in one case would not, by itself, establish that agencies created every major drug problem.

It also helps to separate the origins and spread of drug use from government responses to it. Those are related questions, but they are not interchangeable.

I’d be cautious with any version that says one agency caused all of it. Drug use and drug markets have different histories, and the causes of a public health crisis can’t be reduced to one actor without strong, specific evidence.

That doesn’t mean every allegation about government conduct is baseless. It means each one needs to be checked on its own rather than folded into a single all-explaining story.

There are really two questions here: whether agencies helped cause or worsen particular drug problems, and whether enforcement and public messaging placed unequal blame on minority communities. Evidence for unequal treatment would matter, but it would not automatically prove who created the drug supply or the epidemic.

Keeping those questions separate makes room to discuss harmful policy and racial disparities without claiming more than the evidence can show.