Published at: 26/11/2025 09:00 PM

(TIME, September 15, 1986)

• When another drug crisis broke out in the United States in 1986 for the third time, with the appearance of new narcotics on its streets, several high-circulation newspapers and magazines, part of the TIME-LIFE network, put on the front page a brilliant sentence by the American philosopher, university professor and psychologist William James: “The most lethal enemies of the United States are within its own borders”.
• In this decade of the 80s, streets, schools, universities, Wall Street offices, nightclubs and homes across the country welcomed mass consumption of Crack, Ecstasy (MDMA), Cocaine, the hallucinogen Phenyl-Alkylamine and a new mega-analgesic or “pain killer”, called Fentanyl,
  • Their invention, manufacture and commercialization are due to:

Merck Laboratories, owner of the patent for Ecstasy (MDMA), created by the German chemical inventor Anton Köllish in 1912 for that company.

Crack was invented in 1980 and was first distributed in Miami, Florida. It was local drug traffickers in Mayamero who came up with this mixture, intended to meet the growing demand for the lethal alkaloid, using the waste of the raw material, with powerful chemical solvents that are highly destructive.

Fentanyl was invented by Paul Janssen in 1959 and its patent was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1961. Since then, this laboratory, in complicity with some doctors, has been responsible for intensifying its consumption through the bad and irresponsible practice of prescribing it in bulk, for any kind of pain.

Result: Johnson & Johnson recently paid compensation of $570 million, in compensation for the millions of overdoses that occurred since its circulation on the streets in the 1960s.

Thanks to the tens of thousands of optional prescriptions that circulate annually in all pharmaceutical stores to prescribe powerful painkillers and due to erratic behavior in doctors' operating rooms, medical malpractice is now the third cause of mortality in the United States.

Between 350,000 and 500,000 people die as a result of the commercial practice of medicine in the United States.

Big pharma firms pay hundreds of millions of dollars to expert lawyers to rid doctors of convictions and prison sentences.

Of the 400,000 cases reported in 2024, due to medical malpractice, 17,400 reached millions of dollars in extrajudicial settlements.

The hallucinogen Phenyl-Alkylamine was originally developed by Bayer Laboratories and its use was promoted by the American drug guru Alexander Shulgin in the 80s. This is the forerunner of Methamphetamine.

Cocaine hydrochloride (Snow White) was invented by the Germans Albert Niemann and Wilhem Lossen in 1860. Its consumption became popular in the United States, following the Civil War (1861-1865) through an intense advertising campaign and distribution of wines and colas manufactured from this alkaloid.

The first Cocaine epidemic in the United States, as a public health problem, dates from that time, and it intensified between 1890 and 1912.

But beyond all this nightmare, the Department of Drug Enforcement, or DEA, during the Carter administration, was involved in the scandalous case of the poisoning of one of its most prominent secret agents, Alessandro Bario, 42.

Bario was taken to jail for holding and selling batches of cocaine from Colombia.

While in his cell, Alessandro Bario was killed with strychnine (it kills rats), spread on a peanut butter sandwich, by DEA agents. This was in order to avoid talking about all the undercover operations of other colleagues who also received their good share of drug trafficking.

However, to take a step forward in the knowledge of the true story, it is necessary to know how Hollywood contributed with its filmography to promote and romanticize the cult of drug fetishes.

Cult films about the adventures and misadventures of new generations immersed in addictions are:

EASY RIDER

HAIR

WOODSTOOCK

ALTAMOND FESTIVAL

MONTERREY FESTIVAL

And stop counting.

• These great Hollywood productions injected drug poison into the imaginary of young people, not only with the desire to experiment, but also to become millionaires in the big illegal drug trade. The most macabre incident in Venezuela was the notorious “Case of the Vegas Pérez Child”.
• At the time of this addiction and overdose crisis, the official report of the U.S. Office of Mental Health, from 1986, announced the statistics for addicts over 12 years of age:

22 million regular users of Cocaine.

5.3 million heroin addicts.

4.7 million addicts to Crack.

At that time, the official number of overdoses was around 14,700 deaths.

Mazo News Team