Are the new opioid prescribing restrictions pushing innocent people to the streets to buy heroin? (statistics, solution)
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Well, if you thought the CVS 7 day limit was bad....
"Gov. Rick Scott announced today that he will push for a 3-day limit on prescription opioids during the upcoming legislative session. At a press conference in Bradenton this morning, Scott also announced $50 million will be dedicated to combating the opioid crisis." Gov. Scott to push for 3-day limit on opioid prescriptions
So how much is Govt paying the big pharma companies this time to keep silent? LOL
I can understand if Govt paid them off to accept the 2012 laws, but it seems like Govt keeps cracking down til all opiates will be 100% illegal, I highly doubt the pharma industry would just sit idle and let that happen to such a huge cash cow.
If this is true, all I can say is the drug cartels must have some extremely serious power in DC, in fact, much more powerful than even the pharmaceutical companies!
So how much is Govt paying the big pharma companies this time to keep silent? LOL
I can understand if Govt paid them off to accept the 2012 laws, but it seems like Govt keeps cracking down til all opiates will be 100% illegal, I highly doubt the pharma industry would just sit idle and let that happen to such a huge cash cow.
If this is true, all I can say is the drug cartels must have some extremely serious power in DC, in fact, much more powerful than even the pharmaceutical companies!
I don't think that's the case at all. This is just an example of governmental ineptitude. For decades heroin addicts have been overdosing and dying in inner cities and poor areas in the US, no one noticed, no one cared. The people involved weren't even considered victims. It was only when suburban middle class people got hooked, then the users were called victims and the situation was considered a crisis.
And since the strategy being employed is political, not based on scientific evidence they think they can fix this by eliminating prescribed opioids. It's the same stupid knee jerk reaction that we saw in the 80's when they put crack users in prison for 20 or 30 years while a person possessing a similar amount powdered cocaine would get probation or maybe do a year in jail.
I don't think that's the case at all. This is just an example of governmental ineptitude. For decades heroin addicts have been overdosing and dying in inner cities and poor areas in the US, no one noticed, no one cared. The people involved weren't even considered victims. It was only when suburban middle class people got hooked, then the users were called victims and the situation was considered a crisis.
And since the strategy being employed is political, not based on scientific evidence they think they can fix this by eliminating prescribed opioids. It's the same stupid knee jerk reaction that we saw in the 80's when they put crack users in prison for 20 or 30 years while a person possessing a similar amount powdered cocaine would get probation or maybe do a year in jail.
I couldn't agree more. I had back problems last year which had me out of work for 10 months and ended in surgery. I was in such agony I was crawling to the bathroom, and when I got there it hurt too much to sit on the toilet, I would slide to the ground and cry. During this period my blood pressure went from 120/80 to 160/100. If I hadn't been able to finally get pain meds, I don't think I'd be here now.
It's fine to say"3 days" but the reality of our health care system is that NOTHING is going to be done to fix you in 3 days. It took 3 weeks just to schedule my first (of 4) Epidurals, and 8 months to get me to surgery (my insurance denied the procedure at first so that pushed it back by a couple of months too).
After my pain was gone, I stopped taking my Percosets. I have some that I am hoarding just in case (my spine is a mess from arthritis top to bottom, and a matter of time before something else happens), but I never feel high or good from them and I never had the slightest desire to take "just one more".
I think it's ridiculous that I will be treated in the future based on what other people do and not my own personal health history that any doctor can access.
I don't think that's the case at all. This is just an example of governmental ineptitude. For decades heroin addicts have been overdosing and dying in inner cities and poor areas in the US, no one noticed, no one cared. The people involved weren't even considered victims. It was only when suburban middle class people got hooked, then the users were called victims and the situation was considered a crisis.
And since the strategy being employed is political, not based on scientific evidence they think they can fix this by eliminating prescribed opioids. It's the same stupid knee jerk reaction that we saw in the 80's when they put crack users in prison for 20 or 30 years while a person possessing a similar amount powdered cocaine would get probation or maybe do a year in jail.
If you recall, back in the 80s, there was a very strong effort to go after the source of the coke problem, look at how much they spent going after and killing Pablo Escobar.
Today though, you do not see anyone even suggesting going after the source of the heroin problem, cartels are NEVER the target, all the efforts are made within the US now.
Things were actually much safer before the opiate laws, we have many more overdose and drug related deaths nowadays versus back when people were abusing pills they got from their doctor.
If you recall, back in the 80s, there was a very strong effort to go after the source of the coke problem, look at how much they spent going after and killing Pablo Escobar.
The source of every drug problem (and a lot of other problems) is taking something that people want and making it illegal.
We'd be so much better off with a heavily regulated and taxed drug dispensary system. Cut the criminal organizations out of the act.
This is not "obvious" to me at all.
Tylenol and Aspirin are real killers. So is suicide and not being able to go to work or do a particular job. They say a watched pot never boils - well, pain slows down life so you feel much more of it. Every second.
A Holistic approach doesn't mean using magnets, crystals or prayer. It means the person should eat well, sleep well, lower stress levels, make sure they are getting the proper nutrients...exercising properly and, maybe most importantly, enjoying life!
If opiates are a part of the overall plan, so be it.
I wouldn't call getting off opiates "obvious" any more than I'd call for someone to stop drinking wine or coffee or having recreational sex. That is - unless one is an ascetic and wants to go live in a cave.
There are lots of legal or quasi legal and even OTC pain relief substances...but I suspect many are more dangerous than light opiates. Heck, the tylenol in some opiates is more dangerous than the opiate itself.
Opiates have been one of God's gifts to mankind...they have relieved suffering on the battlefield, in early surgeries, for those who are terminal AND even for everyday people with chronic problems.
It seems so simple. Unless your "drug of choice" is harming your body permanently or making it so you can't function on a day to day level, it's "all good". That is for "regular" people.
For those in chronic pain, even the everyday functioning is not important since they can't handle that anyway.
We have so many "Victorian" ideas....ridiculous. The Forbidden Fruit syndrome....always tends to make things worse.
You are missing my point. There are people (such as myself) that will be on opiates for life. There is so much misinformation out there being sold by the FDA, CDC and DEA. They misrepresent studies about opiate studies and conclusions such as long term opiate use is ineffective. My family has a genetic disorder that causes a predisposition to multiple autoimmune diseases included RA, ankylosing spondylosis, Lupus, MS, as well as some others that they cannot completely diagnose. Opiates are the only thing that have kept us alive.
My point is that if doctors can correct the underlying condition, they should. The U.S. is horrible about coordination of care between different specialists. Often once pain is under control, the search for the root cause of it slows down to a crawl or stops unless the patient continues to push for it. I just recently found the cause for my illness and while it is too late and some of the gene therapies and stem cell treatments are not quite ready for me, they will be for my children now that the cause has been found. But my sister has lived with this for 25+ years with her just being managed on pain medication without any reattempt to find out the cause
Secondly, and you may have missed some of my previous posts, but there are a class of people out there that are truly hurting those like me where opiates are our only solution. I have met many many people that have stayed on opiates for a long period of time (as in years) before being forced to look at other options. There are a great many people that had very minor instances of pain that are prescribed opiates because they oversell their pain. After a couple years they were kicked off and forced to go through a painful physical therapy or change to a drug such as lyrica or gabapentin, minor surgery, or in some cases just living with their pain. There are a whole class of people that can live absolutely normal lives off opiates having only minor occasional pain. They can go to work, to dinner, on a date, drive, dancing, etc. I'll agree that sometimes it is difficult for doctors to make that call but if a patient can do everything he did before the accident or illness, another method of treatment may be warranted. Compare that to people like myself (and it sounds like possibly you or someone you know) where their basic survival requires opiate therapy. It is a completely different case compared to someone like myself where if I was required to live without opiates, I curl into the fetus position and cry, scream, yell, and am unable to do anything but that including eat, drink, or even go to the bathroom. Once in the hospital the attending physician didn't believe my dose and thought there must be a decimal place on my opiate dose. Within 24 hours I was not only screaming and curled up in pain,, but going through withdrawals, throwing up blood, dying. It was over a 3 day weekend where the primary doctor was gone and the intern wasn't allowed to change the dosage of my pain meds because of their draconian policy. They ended up sedating me and inducing a coma until the primary pain management doctor came back.
My point is that the U.S. needs to continually work towards a more coordinated form of care where specialists to actually spend some time coordinating with the primary care doctor and other specialists to find a cure even once the pain is controlled. Additionally, I don't mind that my opiates are continually monitored and need reevaluated. I will need them for life. But many people do not. However it should be a qualified physician that sees the patient regularly in coordination with the patient that makes that call vs. a random pharmacy or the government determining what a patient should get without ever meeting them, knowing their condition, or seeing their medical records.
Until another form of pain medication comes along, Opiates are the only thing that keep me alive. I am scared to death with some of the new rules taking effect in just three weeks at CVS. https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/21/...iption-limits/ I don't know what I am going to do if they do not give me my current dosage. I am currently over 7 times the limit in the article. If I am limited to this amount. I doubt I will be alive come Christmas if this is true.
Originally Posted by 2sleepy View Post
Well, if you thought the CVS 7 day limit was bad....
"Gov. Rick Scott announced today that he will push for a 3-day limit on prescription opioids during the upcoming legislative session. At a press conference in Bradenton this morning, Scott also announced $50 million will be dedicated to combating the opioid crisis."
Gov. Scott to push for 3-day limit on opioid prescriptions
I'm shocked that the old people of Florida, a large percentage of whom are in chronic pain, are not storming the governor's mansion over this ridiculous 3-day rule. Nobody is going to advocate for old people but the old people themselves. If they stand silently by while Scott pushes this through they have nobody to blame but themselves.
The best statistic I have for prescription drug overdose deaths that doesn't skew the numbers by including heroin OD deaths is the CDC website itself. It reports:
Quote:
Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999, and so have sales of these prescription drugs. From 1999 to 2015, more than 183,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids.
Divide that number by 16 years and the number of deaths per year is 11,400 from prescription OD deaths, mostly stupid teens stealing pills out of their parents' cabinet.
Compare that 11.4K with 20,000 deaths annually from suicides related to intolerable pain, deaths from people medicating themselves with alcohol
Quote:
Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010
deaths from stroke and heart attack related to intractable pain, and OD's from pain patients seeking out heroin to relieve their pain, which could be prevented if they were allowed to take opioid painkillers,
Quote:
More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids--nearly double in a decade.
and we get a number that dwarfs the measly 11,000 who die from prescription opioids, yet nobody takes into consideration the roughly 100,000 deaths per year related to untreated pain that could be treated with prescription drugs. Quite simply, nobody cares that for every 1 stupid teen who dies of prescription OD, 10 die from causes related to untreated pain.
That is a statistic the news media will not trumpet anywhere.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 09-27-2017 at 12:29 PM..
You are missing my point. There are people (such as myself) that will be on opiates for life. There is so much misinformation out there being sold by the FDA, CDC and DEA. They misrepresent studies about opiate studies and conclusions such as long term opiate use is ineffective.
The big BIG question in my mind is WHY?????????
Why is the CDC/FDA/DEA doing this to innocent people when they have no skin in the game. Surely they aren't concerned if a few thousand kids die from prescription drug overdoses. They certainly don't care about the tens of thousands dying from alcohol poisoning, NSAID liver poisoning, the suicides from pain, and the old folks dying from replacing prescription painkillers with heroin/fentanyl. So what is driving the government to take this totally illogical course of action???
Oh, and to the list of thousands of deaths related to lack of opioid medications in my post #117 add to that the thousands of deaths from NSAID liver poisoning each year.
Why is the CDC/FDA/DEA doing this to innocent people when they have no skin in the game. Surely they aren't concerned if a few thousand kids die from prescription drug overdoses. They certainly don't care about the tens of thousands dying from alcohol poisoning, NSAID liver poisoning, the suicides from pain, and the old folks dying from replacing prescription painkillers with heroin/fentanyl. So what is driving the government to take this totally illogical course of action???
Oh, and to the list of thousands of deaths related to lack of opioid medications in my post #117 add to that the thousands of deaths from NSAID liver poisoning each year.
Its about job security for law enforcement mainly, think about it, take away drug crime and drug related crime, what would police be left with? Would it be enough for them to justify the HUGE budgets they enjoy right now? Also its about prisons, take all drug offenders out, how many prisons would we really need then?
Its very interesting to read about why drug laws were originally created, even the founders of these laws admitted they were tools to control various races, namely a way to keep certain races out of certain parts of town. It was NEVER about protecting health and safety, that is a farce because they cannot state the real reasons.
The source of every drug problem (and a lot of other problems) is taking something that people want and making it illegal.
We'd be so much better off with a heavily regulated and taxed drug dispensary system. Cut the criminal organizations out of the act.
If they did that, what would happen to all the folks employed in the war on drugs though, all the various law enforcement agencies, the prison industry, etc. There would be a whole lot of people out of a job if they legalized everything and regulated it.
Plus, all the cash and property obtained thru seizures would go away, some depts get most of their budget from this.
LOTS of money in 'fighting' a war, not so much in winning one though.
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