War on Drugs

Joe Lancaster | 9.16.2024 3:40 PM

Last month, federal prosecutors indicted five people for the overdose death of a celebrity the previous year. Three have pleaded guilty so far, and this month, a trial date was set for the other two. Many of the details certainly reveal heinous behavior, but the case makes clear that prohibition itself bears the most responsibility.

On October 28, 2023, Matthew Perry—the actor best known as Chandler Bing on the long-running sitcom Friends—died at his Los Angeles home. The county medical examiner announced in December that Perry's death primarily resulted from "the acute effects of ketamine"; the full autopsy indicated that he drowned in his hot tub when a sizable dose of the drug depressed his breathing and caused him to slip into unconsciousness.

Ketamine was developed for use in anesthesia and pain relief before gaining a reputation as a club drug in the 1980s. Recent evidence suggests it can be used to treat persistent depression and addiction. In the right context, it's also quite safe: A 2022 scientific review of 312 overdoses and 138 deaths in which ketamine was present found "no cases of overdose or death related to the use of ketamine as an antidepressant in a therapeutic setting."

Perry struggled with drug and alcohol addictions for most of his adult life, but the summer before his death, he said he had been sober for 18 months. As investigators would discover, Perry was staying clean through therapeutic ketamine treatments but eventually became addicted to the treatment itself; when doctors refused to increase his dosage, he sought the drug elsewhere.

Among those indicted are physicians Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez,........

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