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80% of the newest heroin users were using prescription opioids first - and many of them got prescriptions from their doctors for pain management. It only takes one week to become physically addicted. Pharmaceuticals, doctors, and nurses have lied about how addictive these things are, and people trust their healthcare providers, so they go along.
I've posted before about a relative who had surgery last year and was told he had to take norco and they consistently told him to stay ahead of the pain and take his meds on time even if he didn't feel pain. They never once asked his history. We come from a long line of alcoholics and some drug abuse, so we're careful about when we drink, we don't mess with drugs, etc.
He never took anything beyond otc pain relievers - even in the hospital. That and ice were all he needed.
Meanwhile, he said a forum he was frequenting pre-op to get some information had some people six and nine months post-surgery saying they still needed to take their norco.
These doctors are criminal in the way they dispense these meds for short term pain.
For a startling look at this epidemic, check out HBO's documentary, WARNING: This Drug May Kill You. In one of the scenes late in the movie you see a Mundelein, IL cop (Lake County, IL is where I live and Mundelein is about 10 mins from me) talking to an addict about going to a state-sponsored rehab, which she finally agreed to do. That's the way it should be handled. Rehab. Lake County is seeing increasing numbers in heroin addiction and deaths.
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies should be helping the people they've led to addiction, not turning them away like they're too dirty to deal with.
I agree. But it takes decades to get a new drug approved. In the meantime people are killing themselves because they can't stand living with the pain anymore and they cannot get appropriate pain meds from their physicians anymore.
Some have said this is a subtle war on old people to put them in so much pain that they elect to kill themselves rather than suffer. I admit it'd be an effective strategy. Estimates are that there are 100 MILLION Americans living with chronic pain, most of them 65+ years of age.
They are draining Social Security and Medicare and bankrupting the country. The FDA/CDC/DEA just might be thinking that if they do nothing and allow these people to live in pain, then a sizable number will of them will eventually just off themselves to escape the misery. Every suicide represents potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in saved benefits the cash-strapped government would otherwise have to pay out to them. Sounds like pure genius to me. Evil, yes, but still pure genius.
It's probably not the pain that's making them suicidal but the withdrawal. They need to file a class-action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies to pay for rehab.
Just pretend it's the 1970s, when Vicodin, Oxycontin and Percocet didn't exist.
People managed to survive and endure pain for centuries, even millenia, without resorting to suicide.
Yes, and stoning gays was perfectly legal at one time. But we changed our moral values over time and today it's not. It was legal for the Conquistadors to kill Inca pagans because of their religious beliefs. And who's to say that the suicide rate in prior centuries wasn't just as high or higher then as it is now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea
Actually it's a success, by any objective measure.
Eh, I can see you get off making outrageous claims, Mircea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coldwine
The FDA isn't in charge in social programs. They have very clearly defined objectives they as an institution perform, and rehab isn't one of them.
The literature on opioid addiction was glaringly obvious since at least the first British Opium War.
What more would you like to do?
The DEA is another organization that has neither the ability nor the plans to do anything. They were never meant to help people. They were only meant to enforce criminal drug laws. They arrest people, seize property, and the entirety of their charge is "treating citizens as criminals".
That being said, the FDA is already under immense budget constraints. They simply do not have enough money, to say nothing of the personnel or organizational know-how, to deal with an addiction epidemic. Their entire purpose is to serve as the first warning before we deal with dangerous drugs, and they fulfilled that purpose.
The DEA does have the funding, but they are equipped to prosecute. They do not run rehab programs, nor do they deal with social change or consequence. In fact, most of their existence is in direct denial of consequence, and I do not see that changing any time soon.
So ultimately you are asking for a social program to deal with the overwhelmingly poor, white, rural folks who will suffer the most under this draconic regime.
I have some very bad news for them: they are getting what they voted for.
EDITED to say:
The CDC? The Centers for Disease Control? The CDC deals with pathogens, not addictive drugs. They're about as well equipped as the IRS to handle such an affair.
Yes, I will agree: in the strictest sense the DEA/FDA is not a social program and it's job is not to worry about people in pain who are cut off from their meds without even the benefit of being weaned off them.
And you're right, from the FDA's point of view "get as much money as we can by asset forfeiture to fund our raids because Congress relies on us doing this to keep ourselves in business."
There is the cold-hearted, business model and there is the humane model.
IF the government wants to wash its hands of people in pain who cannot get relief from that pain because a small percentage of the drugs they use are going to make their way into the hands of teen drug addicts, well it's a dog-eat-dog world we live in, I suppose. How I see it:
The number of people in pain will skyrocket
The drugs that control this pain will be impossible to get
The addicts will turn to heroin and deaths from heroin OD's will skyrocket (it's already happening)
Suicides among elderly people suffering intractable pain will skyrocket
BUT....the FDA will have brought the amount of prescription opioids to zero, so I guess they succeeded at something.
We won't be hearing about this problem , nor the heroin epidemic, this time two years from now.
This is a self-limiting problem. In the most brutal way possible. Some addicts & pain management ( legit addicts ) will commit suicide. Those that seek heroin won't live long either. It will take about two years for the doctors and the Feds to find equilibrium. The others will be dead before then.
We won't be hearing about this problem , nor the heroin epidemic, this time two years from now.
This is a self-limiting problem. In the most brutal way possible. Some addicts & pain management ( legit addicts ) will commit suicide. Those that seek heroin won't live long either. It will take about two years for the doctors and the Feds to find equilibrium. The others will be dead before then.
It will take much longer than a few years to find equilibrium. This kind of thing goes in epochs.
In the early 20th century it was legal. Then in the 1920-1970's it was tightly controlled. The from the 1970's to 2010 it was pretty freely dispensed, especially with the release of Oxycontin on Perdue's promise that Oxy was the answer to a prayer of a long-acting opioid that gave 12-hour continuous relief, but it didn't.
Then with Leslie Stahl's groundbreaking 60-minute piece on pill mills in Florida the tide completely turned to prohibition. I figure we'll be in this prohibition cycle for another 50 years while other more progressive countries all around us learn the secret to treating heroin addiction: give it to the hardcore addicts and let them grow out of their addiction on their own.
Already Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and even Canada are giving diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) to addicts under strict controls and Netherlands and Australia are testing pilot programs because it is so successful.
Only in America will we continue to lock up more and more addicts until we have more prisoners than free citizens, especially with appointments like Jeff Sessions, who has promised to stamp out all drug use including all legalized cannabis use even if he has to imprison every user in the US.
well, I might be the minority here. It looks like there are a lot of anti prescription drug posters here and I can certainly understand the reasons behind it.
I would say that Oxycontin and other similar drugs improve the lives of millions of people. Pain killer made my grandpa's life a little bit tolerable. His words: "at least this is a death with dignity, thanks the drugs.."
Your solution is akin to trying to put out a fire with gasoline while shooting bullets in random directions.
I certainly am not saying all suicides are exactly the same, but if people decided to die, they will find other ways to die, if there is no pain killer, it will be something else.
I lost a boyfriend to suicide, he was an attorney.
I lost three very close friends to suicide, all of them were combat vets.
Two hanged themselves; two shot themselves in the heads.
I don't believe they wanted to die, one friend said, "I just wanted the voices in my head to stop." I think they just wanted pain to stop.
My grandpa was on painkiller for at least 2 years. He was a very successful businessman; a painter and an artist.
I lost a boyfriend to suicide, he was an attorney.
I lost three very close friends to suicide, all of them were combat vets.
Two hanged themselves; two shot themselves in the heads.
I don't believe they wanted to die, one friend said, "I just wanted the voices in my head to stop." I think they just wanted pain to stop.
My grandpa was on painkiller for at least 2 years. He was a very successful businessman; a painter and an artist.
Sorry for your losses but you didnt answer my question.
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