Mass Violence
Columbine: The Shooting That Changed Everything
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 49 minutes — and opened a copycat pipeline that has never closed.
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Drug Trade
The Drug Trade in American History
America spent fifty years losing a war on drugs while the supply got cheaper the prisons filled and 107000 people died in a single year. Four series trace the full story of American drug policy and its costs.
Drug Trade
Meth and Opioids: America's Other Drug Wars
The meth and opioid crises killed differently than crack — in rural trailers and suburban bedrooms rather than city streets. Together they pushed annual overdose deaths past 107000 by 2021.
Drug Trade
The Fentanyl Wave: When the Drug Supply Became Poison
Fentanyl killed 73000 Americans in 2022 — more than traffic fatalities and gun deaths. A synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine now contaminates counterfeit pills and the entire illicit supply.
Drug Trade
Mexican Super Labs: How Meth Production Went Industrial
When U.S. law closed domestic meth labs in 2005 Mexican cartels built super labs producing 100 pounds of meth per day at 90-100 percent purity — cheaper and more dangerous than anything before.
Drug Trade
Meth in Rural America: The Drug That Ate Small Towns
Methamphetamine grew from within rural America in the 1990s — out of farm communities watching their economies collapse. Twelve thousand meth labs seized in 2001 alone before Mexican cartels took over the market.
Drug Trade
The Opioid Crisis: How Purdue Pharma Started an Epidemic
Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin with false safety claims its own team knew were wrong. The resulting epidemic killed more than 500000 Americans between 1999 and 2019 and is still going.
Drug Trade
The War on Drugs: America's Longest Failed Experiment
Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971. Fifty years later drug use is higher the supply is more dangerous and the U.S. has incarcerated more people per capita than any country on earth.
Drug Trade
Modern Drug Reform: Decriminalization and What Comes Next
Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020 then partially reversed it in 2024. The reform era has lowered incarceration and spread naloxone but has not replaced the enforcement framework it dismantled.
Drug Trade
Mass Incarceration: How the Drug War Built the Prison System
The U.S. prison population grew from 200000 to 2.3 million between 1972 and 2008 — a 1000 percent increase. Drug offenses drove a twelve-fold share of that growth while Black incarceration hit six times the white rate.
Drug Trade
Stop and Frisk: Policing by Numbers
The NYPD conducted 4.4 million stop-and-frisk encounters between 2002 and 2013. Ninety percent targeted Black and Latino New Yorkers. Eighty-eight percent were found to have done nothing wrong.
Drug Trade
Three Strikes Laws: Life Sentences for Petty Crime
California's three-strikes law gave a man 25 years to life for stealing a pizza slice. Applied at 13 times the rate against Black defendants as white defendants — and reversed by voters in 2012.