I just read an interesting series of tweets about the politics of TrumpCare, and what effect its passage might have politically.
Had a long conversation with friend who is former Democratic speaker of WV House of Delegates about voter remorse and #Trumpcare 1/
— Data&Politics ? (@dataandpolitics) March 13, 2017
Addendum: he thinks Dems' most effective message is #Trumpcare's reduction of opioid addiction care. Almost every family affected in WV
— Data&Politics ? (@dataandpolitics) March 13, 2017
I feel like everywhere I turn the past few days, I see articles about deaths from opioid overdose. I was stunned to see that the number of people who died from synthetic opioid overdoses in 2015 was up 72% over 2014, and that the total number of opioid overdose deaths each year is now about the same as the number of people who died in car accidents. According to Vox, about 2.8 million people could lose access to drug treatment if ACA is repealed.
Trump did very well among voters in areas most affected by the opioid epidemic. In October, the Trump campaign claimed it had a plan to end the opioid epidemic. Hard to imagine that plan involved getting rid of everyone’s access to drug treatment programs.
amk
Hillary did speak of opioid addiction and the way to deal with it unlike the twitler.
Enough with the dems oughta to do this, dems oughta do that to reach out to these racist numbnutz lectures.
efgoldman
If they die, they don’t need insurance or treatment anymore.
Baud
@amk: You beat me to it.
mai naem mobile
I have a friend of a friend whose son died of a heroin overdose a couple of months ago. He was 30. He had a decent job. He was living with the father. The father found him dead. My friend has been friends with the father for over 20 years and he had no idea the son even had problems because he thinks the father was ashamed. The family was well off. Definitely not rust belt laid off workers struggling financially. Not that it matters but the father is a big Republican.
danielx
@efgoldman:
That thinking could be extended further. Republican thinking:
Well, hey, if 14,000,000 lose their health care and blame us, a good portion of them will probably die in the next two years. Fewer tax dollars spent and fewer votes against us! Win-win!
Baud
@amk:
More
BTW, the article is a complete both-sides (are good in this case) mess.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Opiate problems now affect a large number of my family law cases – over 25%. It is beyond the ability of the courts to manage.
On another note, an officemate who despises Trump just scored a couple of tix to see Trump here in the People’s Democratic Soc!alist Kenyan Sharia Republic of Louisville next week. He wants me to come along so we can both show our asses and see where it all goes.
I think I’m going.
In case anybody thinks we’re wild eyed hippies IRL, we’re not. My clientele is pretty vanilla and business-y. He’s a career former prosecutor, used to work the special squad at the AG’s office – public integrity, capital crimes. He’s been the lead on several successful capital prosecutions, including a serial killer.
Stan
It’s in the same file drawer as the plan to eliminate ISIS, one drawer down from the Mexican-funded border wall plan.
Ruckus
Need to look at this from an addicts point of view. They want their addiction fed. The only time they want to get clean is when staying on affects their life to a worse degree than whatever it takes to get clean. Also if this many people are getting addicted and dying and it’s growing at the level given, I don’t see that a lot of the addicts are in any hurry to clean up. I’ve known drunks that have/had good paying jobs and some that sleep on the street and heroin addicts as well and they mostly at some point see what it is doing to them, either by introspection or by looking around at who ends up their friends, who are mostly in the same mess. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Is it the drug or is it the addict?
All that said, taking away the ability to get clean is just horrible. There are obviously people who end up wanting to get clean and the republicans seem to just want to throw them away. They really are fascist scum.
Libby Spencer
First they came for the coal miners … Sometimes the snake oil won’t just rob you, it will kill you.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You are a better man than I am.
danielx
Why is comment editor telling me I do not have permission to edit my own comment?
Oh well, I was just going to add: fuck trolls and the purity ponies they rode in on.
Doug!
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You should go!
PST
When I was knocking on doors in Ohio before the election, I was surprised by the number of people I talked to (all of them white) who said they were considering voting for Trump because they thought he could do something about the epidemic of opioid addiction. For some reason, they had gotten it into their heads that Obamacare was responsible for the increase in addiction, because it enabled doctors to profit by handing out prescription drugs at little or no cost to the patient. This was irrational, but their pain seemed real. I got the impression I was talking to people who had witnessed disasters in their families. And then their was also a touch of the old “we need a leader strong enough to do something about this.” So the cutting back of drug treatment programs might be an effective issue to hammer.
jharp
“America’s opioid-overdose crisis, Ohio is at the center of the map. In 2015, 2,700 of its people died from prescription and illicit opioids, a number far higher than any other state and one that shot up by 28 percent in one year.”
http://www.toledoblade.com/Op-Ed-Columns/2017/01/21/Medicaid-patients-need-options-in-opioid-fight.html
Baud
I did record Wilmer’s town hall in WV, but only saw about 10 minutes of it. Will watch the rest tomorrow to see if opoid and Obamacare come up.
mai naem mobile
Completely off topic but I bet it burns up Dolt 45 to see the loonnnggg clip of Preet Bharara shaking the hands of all those NY USAG employees. Those people standing out there in the cold were a bigger group than the Trumpkins who showed at the rallies a couple of weekends ago.
Mike J
@Baud:
And cutting the Coast Guard budget ought to help with that. ?
PST
@jharp: It was Toledo where I was working. I had never in my life seen billboards encouraging people to be sure they had Narcan available in case they overdosed. I never even imagined seeing such a thing. But they were common in Toledo.
different-church-lady
@PST: I’m starting to think the best solution is to open the nuclear football, put the codes in front of Trump, and poke him repeatedly with a stick. Because we are clearly too dumb as a species to continue, and it’s time to give the cockroaches a shot at things.
Major Major Major Major
I hope that the (sober) people who voted for this trash monster enjoy watching their friends and family die as a result.
The addicts who did it… have an excuse.
Major Major Major Major
The drudge headline right now is CBO THROWS STINK ON HEALTHCARE BILL. Maybe the rats are starting to notice their ship has some holes in it.
amk
@Major Major Major Major: I thought breitfart is the new drudge?
hovercraft
@mai naem mobile:
As Crispy Christie said during a moment of real eloquence, opioid addiction doesn’t care about socioeconomic background, it is devastating people everywhere. We urbanites have more resources to deal with the problem, so it’s not as hopeless, but it’s bad here too.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Sounds like fun. I assume you can defend yourself.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: It would be cool if the CBO could actually make a bill stink based on how bad it was. Like something out of Harry Potter.
hovercraft
@amk:
It’s worse than that, they are the new White House press office.
Major Major Major Major
@amk: Breitbart turned on the repeal bill a few days back, much to the consternation of Bannon. The new editor isn’t toeing the party line.
Chet Murthy
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in one’s head simultaneously and still function ….
I feel pity and sympathy for these people — addiction is a public health problem
And yet, even today I’m sure there are thousands and thousands of people of color being railroaded to prison for the same actions as these poor victims.
And the white opioid epidemic has pretty much swept those people of color off the public agenda. For decades those people have been demonized, attacked, imprisoned, and left to rot and die with their disease. And now the disease has erupted amongst formerly comfortable whties, and NOW it’s a big deal. But it wont change the lives of those people of color. B/c they’re criminals, they’re predators, etc, etc, etc.
Doug R
In our province of 4,630,000 people, 914 died of opiate overdoses last year, roughly THREE TIMES as many as die in car crashes.
Baud
@Chet Murthy: Just say no, brother.
Villago Delenda Est
I think that a part of the opoid problem is that for years the medical community avoided treating chronic pain with opoids, and overreacted to criticism of that reluctance and went too far the other way, and now we’ve got these OD problems suffered by people who are dealing with very real pain issues that will simply not go away. All of this goes back to a dearth of preventative care caused by our profit-driven health care system, and the insurance system that feeds it.
hovercraft
@Mike J:
What does one have to do with the other?
Oh you mean to say they don’t just walk across the border, they can actually get in boats and get here through the water? Wow :-0 that never occurred to me, and what’s that about tunnels underneath the wall? This stuff is really complicated, why the hell didn’t anyone tell me this?
PST
Something that is bugging me about the coverage of the CBO report is a huge mistake being made in an apparent effort at balance. For example, the New York Times headline reads, “Health Bill Would Add 24 Million Uninsured but Save $337 Billion, Report Says.” But that is comparing cumulative savings over an arbitrary time period, in this case 10 years, with a level of insurance loss that gets repeated every year. Setting aside reasons why the estimated budget savings is illusory, it would be much fairer apples-to-apples comparison to say that we can save an average of $33.7 million per year off the federal budget at the cost of insuring 24 million fewer people each year. That would have the benefit of making it easy to see that the government would save only $1400 for each person dropped from the insurance rolls, a bad bargain from almost any point of view one might choose, even the most mercenary, since the public inevitably ends of bearing a large share of the avoidable medical costs that eventually pile up from lack of treatment.
cmorenc
One of the most stunning things about the opioid addiction epidemic is the accompanying epidemic of chronic constipation – quite literally, opioid addicts are full of shit. If you’ve ever taken a course of opioids post-op, you know this isn’t a joke.
Feathers
The number of otherwise healthy young people dying of overdose is high enough that it has noticeably shortened the waiting list for donor kidneys.
My cousin’s husband became addicted to prescription painkillers. Got himself clean, but killed himself about a year later. This truly sucks.
Makes you realize the ways that people trying to actually solve the problems (AKA Democrats) end up sounding worse than people just lying and pretending there are easy answers.
debbie
@PST:
It’s all over Ohio. At one point earlier this year, the Dayton coroner ran out of room in the morgue.
different-church-lady
@hovercraft:
Gin & Tonic
@hovercraft: Yeah, but 30 years ago when it was crack in the cities, “lock ’em up and throw away the key” was the answer.
I know you know that and the reason for it, just had to get it off my chest.
amk
@PST: you see, them numbers have to be bigly, otherwise you’re a LOSER.
danielx
One desirable result (knock on wood) of the current mess: odds are that Paul Ryan will be out of the Speaker’s office by the time it’s over. Republicans’ favorite policy wise man had seven years to come up with something, and it’s a miserable failure.
Somebody is going to have to walk the plank when the 2018 tidal wave hits, and it ain’t gonna be lord shortfingers, nor yet any members of the kkkrazy kkkaucus, nor Yertle McConnell.
Baud
@PST: I think the 24 million is after 10 years also.
Dcrefugee
@Major Major Major Major:
Interesting…
My recollection is Bannon loathes Ryan. Since nothing coming out of the White House is legit, I wonder if there’s a strategy to let the House bill fail and blame it on Ryan. I’ll settle for fratricide.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: What ever happened with the case of that extended weed-growing family that was gunned down in their beds? That story vanished down the memory hole right quick-like.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: we also are way behind the curve on letting doctors prescribe suboxone (and getting them to as well) because of various failings at basically every regulatory and moral level in how we deal with addiction and pain. Same with alcohol and naltrexone.
Gin & Tonic
@danielx: I’d almost enjoy sitting down for a couple of Scotches with Boehner right about now. Part of going through life involves knowing when to leave the party, and he had a real good sense of that, IMO.
Another Scott
@jharp: I’ve mentioned before that my mom’s autopsy in Ohio last year was delayed for over a month because the Dayton coroner’s office was backed up doing autopsies of heroin and opiate/opioid overdose deaths.
Since so many of these ODs happen in people who are young, an autopsy is almost always required and the workload is crushing.
It’s a relatively minor thing (compared to all the other tragic aspects), but it’s another example of the real effects that refusing to treat this (and so many other) drug problem(s) as a public health issue rather than as a crime issue. Families that have to deal with the death of a loved one cannot plan services or reach some sort of closure in a reasonable period of time because there are just so many people dying who shouldn’t be…
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
XTPD
@Villago Delenda Est: Tangentially related is how doctor only started anesthetizing infants in the late ’80s, for similar reasons to their previous withholding of opioids.
danielx
@Gin & Tonic:
True enough – Boehner seems to be enjoying life, and laughing his ass off at his erstwhile colleagues.
Tenar Arha
@PST: Will no one save us from this epidemic of both siderist balance!? /snark (Yes, I’m Bitter Bitterson tonight. Did you all see the latest EO? I think they want to destroy the Executive Branch to “save it” in the name of “efficiency,” i.e. autocracy).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so… they’re going to save this bill by loudly announcing they’re going to cut people off before the midterms? please proceed, Trumpy.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Ruckus: The question “Is it the drug or is it the addict?” reveals a lack of understanding of what opiate addiction is. Most people who become addicted to opiates start down that road when they have legitimate pain management issues, not as a means of getting high. They quickly develop tolerance to the drugs, and physical dependence follows on after that, equally quickly. Opiate addiction is not a moral choice once the addiction takes hold. It is a physical dependency which usually cannot be stopped without pharmacological intervention and lots of therapy. Opiate addiction is the drug. The addict is just along for the ride.
PST
@Baud:
I think it hits 24 million after a couple of years, but my point doesn’t depend on that. 24 million isn’t the cumulative number of years of insurance lost over ten years, so it doesn’t make sense to compare 24 million versus $337 billion. Assume the affect of the act is to stabilize insurance at a level 24 million lower than the present level year after year. You could just as easily compare 24 million to $3.37 trillion dollars over the next hundred years. The time period is arbitrary unless it fosters a comparison of insurance lost over a time period with money saved over the same period. In other words, what does the government save by kicking someone off insurance for a year? Not much, even if $1400 turns out to be a very rough estimate.
Another Scott
@PST: The lack of detail in the CBO report is purely intentional, as you can imagine.
SmartyPantsNancy LeTourneau at WaMo:They’re desperate to pass this giant tax cut while calling it A New And Bigly Better Healthcare Bill before people understand what’s in it. So far, they’re failing…
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@PST: NYT is garbage. In before Baud.
Major Major Major Major
@PST: it’s 24 million in nine years and 14 million in one.
Ian
I only feel sympathy for those who lost someone to heroine, but seriously, enough of this crap. They voted for the douchebag who is going to take away their health care and any access to affordable medication. This is cause and effect, and they have the problem completely ass backwards.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I bet if they included throwing poor people into a den of hungry bears, they could find the votes.
BlueDWarrior
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The mind wobbles
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks! I was looking at the numbers and completely missed the name of the paper.
Baud
@Ian: The costs of sticking it to us is high, but many will pay it willingly.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They were making excuses for Steve fucking King.
hovercraft
@different-church-lady:
Unfortunately we are both correct, they are both. Sigh.
@Gin & Tonic:
Just like those people are accountable for crimes committed by their people and rural people commit individual crimes. Urban drug offenses are because of gang activity and criminality and single mothers, rural drug addiction is caused by disease and economic anxiety.
True story!
Oatler.
In all the opiate hoopla, the Schedule I status of cannabis remains. Why?
Baud
CNN is doing its job.
Ian
@Libby Spencer:
Thank the Godess…
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: There are no excuses for Steve fucking King
Keith P.
Now we know why the WH doesn’t believe the CBO’s numbers – the WH predicted bigger losses!
amk
@Keith P.: and yet twitler is pushing for it. my way or highway.
Major Major Major Major
@Oatler.: money, racism, superstition, Vietnam.
Baud
@amk: By stopping this thing, we can save lives and piss Donald off. Win-win.
hovercraft
@Dcrefugee:
Bannon loathes the GOP “establishment”, because they don’t openly embrace white nationalism. In his eyes the rest of us celebrate our cultures, and have our special privileges, like Black History Month, and MLK Day, only the poor white people are being held back and forced to hide their heroes and culture. Never mind everything the GOP does in terms of policy is advantageous to white people, not being overtly racist is unforgivable. White people are the victims of most racism in America, dontcha know?
Another Scott
@Ian: What’s that old saying? Something about shoes?
Honest work.
I don’t know anyone who’s never made a bad decision in their lives, myself.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gemina13
Apparently, even the White House’s own analysts curb-stomped the Trumpcare bill. When your own people announce, “It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh,” you should bury the damn thing. Instead, we’re probably going to get some machinations and late-night deals to try to make sausage out of this rancid fecal matter. The only blessing so far is that it’s already drawn an audience, and more people will probably line up to heckle the would-be sausagemakers while setting up gibbets and gallows.
JCJ
At a recent meeting reviewing new cases of brain tumors the neuropathologist was reviewing a case showing the transition from malignancy to normal brain on a pathology slide. She then said that she was seeing so many autopsy cases with normal brains from opiate overdoses – way more than are being reported in the media here (Milwaukee area).
Steve in the ATL
@Mike J: where on the Pac NW coast do you live?
danielx
@Oatler.:
Because cannabis laws were and to some extent still are a mechanism of social control. The actual effects and dangers (or lack thereof) are not relevant.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Believe it or not, they’re still working on it. They now think it was a local job, not a Mexican cartel as was initially thought.
Chet Murthy
@Ian:
It -is- a bit of a mystery. Every time in the past, from what I’ve read (and specifically recally reading about Nazi Germany) fascists have made sure to cosset and reward their base. B/c gotta, to keep power. And these guys aren’t doing that. They’ve gotta be either really stupid, or really clever. I wonder which. Or perhaps they don’t think of the WWC as their base? In which case, they’ve already got the plan to ensure that if/when the work turns (and it will after enough years of WWC children dying), they won’t be able to vote the regime out?
I don’t want to conclude it’s stupidity. Always better to conclude that -after- they’ve been run out of town on a rail.
Eric S.
@cmorenc: 14 days post on here. I can confirm.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: they could have turned this country into a one-party ethnostate so fast it would make your head spin if they’d half-competently followed the fascist playbook. Fortunately they’re idiots.
Edit: just saw YOUR edit. It’s both malice and incompetence at work here.
mai naem mobile
@amk: because Twitler doesn’t give a shit. His aim is 1/to ‘win’ because that’s how he looks at everything and 2/get tax cuts for his wealthy pals so he can get feted at their parties.
Feathers
@Ruckus: You are missing the fact that opiate addiction is very different medically from either alcoholism or addiction to stimulants (cocaine, meth, et al). The problem is that using isn’t the problem – trying not to use and going through a physical withdrawal is. It’s why the 12-step addiction model kills opiate addicts at a criminally high rate. It just shouldn’t even be allowed to be used on opioid users. (That it is completely unproven to help alcoholics is another story entirely – true medical treatments can’t just count the people that they help and ignore those unhelped or harmed by treatment.) I’m old enough that when I went through my drug education in high school we were taught that cocaine was not addictive, because it didn’t cause a physical withdrawal.
Feathers
Just heard the term “Trumpcroak” as a name for the Ryan plan. I like it. Especially because it will drive the Tangerine Nightmare round the bend if it catches on.
Barbara
@Feathers: Based on purely anecdotal evidence of personal acquaintances and the tv show Intervention, heroin seems to be the hardest drug to quit using. Some people describe the feeling of using as being almost sexual. Longer term users might not get that feeling but still need the drug to function, and probably crave how it made them feel the first time they used.
danielx
@Chet Murthy:
Policy-wise, they’ve been crapping on their base for better than a quarter century now and it hasn’t cost them a thing. They figure they haven’t run out their string yet, and if they keep pushing voter restrictions for Those People, which their base eats up with a spoon, they can extend it a while longer.
@hovercraft:
Hard to believe this asshole looks in the mirror and sees a racial superman genius. At least Reinhard Heydrich looked the part.
.
Gin & Tonic
@Barbara: I was administered morphine after an accident. I can assure you that it feels *really* good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: Go watch “Trainspotting.”
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
And even more, for the ignorant, hateful, ignorant (did I say ignorant?) fucking assholes who keep voting for him.
catclub
@Stan:
I bet the plan on ISIS is do-able: Don’t Fuckup what Obama was doing, and then take credit, will work. Not so much on the wall thing.
Chet Murthy
@Feathers: @Barbara: Feathers’ comment is really key. Some drugs, you get a psychological dependence, and maybe by dint of mental fitness built-up over time, a community of people helping you, etc, you can stay clean.
But opiates aren’t like that (generally — maybe there’s an exception, but nothing comes to mind). Your body gets addicted, and withdrawal can be (as Feathers notes) fatal. We can talk all we want about the moral failings of people who allow themselves to try opiates. But once they’re addicted, it’s no longer in the realm of “moral” (except for those rare individuals with the willpower of the Gods). It’s a medical problem, full stop.
But BTW, I recall reading once a while back, that the recidivism curves for nicotine were such that it was classed as -more- addictive (yes, nicotine is also physically addictive) than heroin.
And I believe that in high enough doses alcohol is physically addictive also — hence the DTs (delirium tremens).
Lotta people out there, wavin’ their bibles and spoutin’ about morality, sin, and willpower, when it’s more about chemistry and biology, sigh.
catclub
@Feathers: Trumpentodt?
danielx
@Barbara:
Truth. I was prescribed perc0set a while back during a serious internal malfunction and thought “where has this been all my life?” Didn’t develop a habit, but I can see the attraction.
efgoldman
@mai naem mobile:
They still won’t let him into polite society.
Chet Murthy
@Feathers: Simon Schama came up with “Trumpcroak”, afaict. That triggered some word-matching:
RepubliKill
“Stop the RepubliKill bill!”
“Down with RepubliKill”
catclub
@Gin & Tonic:
Not really. He left when it had been obvious for a long time that it was no longer working for him. He did leave before the job killed him or he lost re-election.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: I believe alcohol and benzos are the only drugs where the withdrawal itself can kill you.
Fair Economist
@Villago Delenda Est:
Or maybe not. There’s actually almost no evidence opioids help with *chronic* pain. Short-term it helps, but habituation to opioids makes pain *worse*. Which effect prevails in the long term hasn’t been studied.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Major Major Major Major: NMDA receptor agonists including alcohol, benzodazepines, old school barbiturates, methaqualone… All the stuff that turns you into a plant.
Yarrow
@cmorenc: The Superbowl before last there was even a commercial for a medication for opioid induced constipation. It’s such a big thing they advertised on the Superbowl.
Gemina13
@Gin & Tonic: I had Dilaudid after my thyroidectomy. (Fentanyl was administered during, but when I couldn’t wake up from it, they switched to Dilaudid.) Due to a misunderstanding with my nurse, I had it given three times. She kept asking, “Do you have any pain?” and I would answer, “Yes, in my throat.” She thought I was referring to the incision, when I actually meant that, due to the breathing tube being inserted and withdrawn, the inside of my throat felt raw. The nurse who replaced her had a whole candelabra go off over his head when I explained what I meant some . . . 8 hours later.
But Dilaudid felt good. I got over an addiction to Vicodin in my 20s, and the high from Dilaudid was almost as good as Vicodin – I felt like I was wrapped in a fuzzy towel straight out of the dryer. The only thing that was missing was the blissful feeling of being safe and loved. If I’d felt as good on Dilaudid as I once had with Vicodin, I’d have been in deep shit.
Origuy
I”ve mentioned before that my housemate has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Pain is her constant companion. She’s had multiple spine surgeries, needs a hip replacement, etc. When she first was diagnosed with EDS, they put her on oral morphine, but the dopiness affected her functioning. They changed her to oral methadone, which fixed the dopiness. She was on that for a long time and went through withdrawal a few times when MediCare was fucking with her prescription or no doctor would fill it. They kept her on a low dosage, just enough to take care of the daily pain. Methadone can mess up your heart, though, so they have her now on fentanyl patches, with oral morphine for breakthrough pain. That seems to be enough to keep her going, though she’s never really pain free. Without opioids, she would have long ago died in agony.
Anonymous patient
@danielx:
But in states where cannabis is legal, opioid problems diminish! Sometimes dramatically.
I take painkillers for chronic pain. The last time I got my prescription filled, the very nice pharmacist counciled me about the antidote which was now available for the asking. I declined, I have no trouble taking what I need when I need and not when I don’t.
The lethality problem seems to be when folks can’t continue to receive those drugs from a pharmacy for $5.00, and buy cheap heroin on the street that is adulterated with fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than plain heroin.
For a very long time people with a regular supply of their drug of choice have been able to have a productive life, in England addicts get their drug at the drugstore and go on to work. Famous musicians have great and creative careers while addicted – if they aren’t arrested or unable to acquire their drug consistently.
In Portugal all drugs are legal and they have no problems with addiction.
The problem is not an opioid epidemic! The problem is the War on Drugs! Drugs are not an enemy to fight, they are just part of the environment we live in. When treated as such they do far less harm than a prison sentence does.
The deaths aren’t from prescription drugs – they’re from illicit street drugs of unknown strength!
People who are suicidal will find a way, this isn’t part of the epidemic.
Ruckus
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
For some of us, drugs like some of the benzodazepines can make the difference between living somewhat normally and barely functional, at least that’s what my current usage gives me. This may change, who the hell knows. I can say I don’t like taking addictive drugs but some days ya do what ya gotta do.
Montanareddog
A politician will tell you she has a plan to address a problem. A conman will tell you he has a plan to end a problem.