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I bet at least some of them started with booze. And those that did really start with pot got their harder drugs from their pot dealer or someone their pot dealer referred them to. That might imply it wasn't the drug itself that led them down the path, it was the black market they were forced to go through in order to get the drug that opened the door for them.
No argument, following that line of thought you could say just as it's not opioids or heroin that led to their deaths but the abuse of it...
Thank you for being a voice of reason here. Relapse rates are as high as 50% even with suboxone and methadone therapy. The relapse rate for NA/AA is reported to be as high as 95%. To make it worse, relapse is considered a failure and the addict is called weak or accused of not wanting to get better and as a result they are further marginalized and even less likely to seek treatment.
Prohibition doesn't work and it never will, it just pushes addicts underground into a far more dangerous world than they would face if they were able to obtain their drug of choice from a physician and use it in a clean safe environment under the supervision of medical personnel.
A close friend is a Pharmacist and we talk all the time about this, he said Suboxone and Methadone are just as bad and that they are now being told that Methadone will be phased out soon, he thinks due to the high abuse rate. It's amazing the drugs that get abused now, some that I didn't think would get a fly high like flexeril. I took that when it first came out and it wasn't any better than Alieve.
I'm not going to argue with any of that, but who benefits from strong drug cartels other than the cartels themselves? Drug companies have lobbyists with piles of money. Are there tangible traces of money flowing from the cartels to our government?
US law enforcement and prisons benefit greatly from the drug war, some police depts rely on cash and property seizures for part of their operating budget!
Not to mention the budget money they receive! Operation Fast and Furious was also a good example of how our Govt works in collusion with the cartels, if they supply them with weapons, they are likely assisting them in other ways too.
In order to keep the drug war going, and the continue its justification, there needs to be a steady flow of drugs coming in, police would have no arrests to make, nothing to seize if the supply line was cut off or stopped altogether.
If the drug companies have so much money and influence, why did they allow Govt/ DEA to swoop in and regulate opioid drugs? This was at a time when they were selling like hotcakes, doctors were handing them out left and right!
Some began or sustain their journey using pills for recreational purposes that were scored on the street
Same in our community, and in out own extended family.
The typical person overdosing is not "grandma" who was prescribed pain meds for too long after hip replacement, and is now going down to the seedy side of town to obtain heroin.
It's those that started out taking the drugs with the intention to abuse, and were usually not prescribed the medications directly in the first place.
I rarely hear personal responsibility discussed in these MSM reports about this "crisis". You know, these days, everyone is a victim.
A close friend is a Pharmacist and we talk all the time about this, he said Suboxone and Methadone are just as bad and that they are now being told that Methadone will be phased out soon, he thinks due to the high abuse rate. It's amazing the drugs that get abused now, some that I didn't think would get a fly high like flexeril. I took that when it first came out and it wasn't any better than Alieve.
Methadone will NEVER be phased out, its too cheap, insurance companies would fight tooth and nail to keep this drug instead of paying for more expensive types of treatment.
Point is, these decisions need to be made by DOCTORS, Govt has no business coming between patient and doctor. Every patient is going to have different needs too. If we cannot trust doctors to make responsible decisions when prescribing drugs, why should they be trusted to make other more important treatment decisions then?!!
btw, suboxone saved my life, without it, I would be dead by now! They should be handing it out on street corners imo! Its much much safer than the alternatives.
Thank you for being a voice of reason here. Relapse rates are as high as 50% even with suboxone and methadone therapy. The relapse rate for NA/AA is reported to be as high as 95%. To make it worse, relapse is considered a failure and the addict is called weak or accused of not wanting to get better and as a result they are further marginalized and even less likely to seek treatment.
Prohibition doesn't work and it never will, it just pushes addicts underground into a far more dangerous world than they would face if they were able to obtain their drug of choice from a physician and use it in a clean safe environment under the supervision of medical personnel.
Why is she the voice of reason here? Because she's the only person in the thread who turned it in to a racial issue? Nothing else she said was any different from what others have been saying.
Methadone will NEVER be phased out, its too cheap, insurance companies would fight tooth and nail to keep this drug instead of paying for more expensive types of treatment.
Point is, these decisions need to be made by DOCTORS, Govt has no business coming between patient and doctor. Every patient is going to have different needs too. If we cannot trust doctors to make responsible decisions when prescribing drugs, why should they be trusted to make other more important treatment decisions then?!!
btw, suboxone saved my life, without it, I would be dead by now! They should be handing it out on street corners imo! Its much much safer than the alternatives.
Interesting reading and one of many.
Quote:
Methadone is a long-acting opioid predominantly used to mitigate withdrawal symptoms from opioid use disorder, but the drug has increasingly been used to treat noncancer pain since the mid-1990s. While methadone prescribing rates are low—the drug accounts for just 1 percent of all opioid prescriptions—it is associated with roughly 23 percent of prescription opioid-related overdose deaths. In Medicaid, earlier research showed high rates of prescribing methadone for pain among beneficiaries, and also determined that the drug was responsible for a disproportionate share of overdose deaths in this population.
Federal agencies have urged prescribers and insurers to take action to reduce harms associated with the drug. In 2016, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services called on Medicaid programs to remove methadone for the treatment of pain from their preferred drug lists (PDLs). Preferred status is a designation by which states encourage the use of a drug for a specific disease or condition. In the past several years, many states have taken this and other steps to reduce use of this drug.
A close friend is a Pharmacist and we talk all the time about this, he said Suboxone and Methadone are just as bad and that they are now being told that Methadone will be phased out soon, he thinks due to the high abuse rate. It's amazing the drugs that get abused now, some that I didn't think would get a fly high like flexeril. I took that when it first came out and it wasn't any better than Alieve.
It doesn't sound like your friend knows what he's talking about. Methadone is not being 'phased out' because it works. Methadone and Suboxone are not "just as bad", they are substitutes for heroin, they allow users to function without craving drugs or going through withdrawal, that means they have an opportunity to get a job, take care of their family and function in society. Yes, some people abuse those drugs but people also abuse xanax, adderall and a number of other drugs and they aren't "phasing them out"
btw, suboxone saved my life, without it, I would be dead by now! They should be handing it out on street corners imo! Its much much safer than the alternatives.
Amen to that! One of my friends has a 40 year old son who has been addicted to heroin since he was in his early 20's he's been in and out of prison & rehab a number of times, has OD'd and almost died countless times and none of that made him stop his drug use. Five years ago he started on suboxone and he's been sober ever since. For the first time in his life he's held a job for longer than a few weeks and he's raising his child whose mother died a few years ago from a heroin overdose.
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