Gee Officer Krupke, many Americans are too deprived to pass a drug test!

Axios' report on widespread illicit drug use among unemployed Americans skirts the obvious question: If they're unemployed, how can they afford the drugs? And from Axios it seems Goldman Sachs also avoids the obvious in a note to its clients. So I'm not sure I'll buy the explanation for the situation, which from Axios goes like this:

The reports suggest a circularity to the crisis in America's rust and manufacturing belts: the loss of jobs and wage stagnation has led to widespread disaffection, alienation and drug abuse; and drug abuse has led to joblessness, hopelessness and disaffection.

The explanation, which political Liberals have deployed to rationalize everything from drug epidemics to street gangs to crime sprees to unemployment, reminds me of West Side Story's hilarious "Gee, Officer Krupke!" The song's shrewd lyrics, I suspect, are as relevant in today's USA as they were more than a half century ago.  

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