Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
We changed the formula for Oxycontin to prevent addicts using it. So they switched to heroin. Now they’re dying in droves, which means the problem is solving itself. I’m having trouble seeing the problem.
Joe Doakes
Enh, not if it’s one of my relatives.
But it never fails amaze me that government never, ever figures out the whole “unintended consequenes” thing.
If it doesn’t have funding behind it it won’t mean very much. If we were at War losing over 50,000 lives a year what resources would we commit to winning?
They’ve figured it out. Unintended consequences means more laws, power and job security.
In the name of combatting addiction, there has been a major drive by the DEA to cut opioid dosages for people with severe, lifelong pain. These are people who have followed all of the rules, and never abused their medications, but are being quickly weaned down to dosages that leave them in perpetual agony. Some of them have chosen suicide, rather than a life of unrelenting pain. Instead of showing concern for those people, and reconsidering the tactic, the DEA has been getting more and more strict, treating the suicides as if they were a symptom of addiction, rather than a reaction to being refused treatment.
I’m conflicted, as I’ve seen this close up. Studies seems to show a huge chance of addiction after even 3 days of opiod use in medically supervised doses and anecdotally I’ve seen the same. Those folks did nothing wrong, yet we do an inadequate job of followup care to help them when they might be more curable. Then there’s just being young and stupid: falling for peer pressure and trying it “just once” can be a death sentence.
How to fix the problem, though, seems beyond medical science now. Even the best programs like Hazelton have at best a 20% chance of “curing” the problem with months of in-patient and out-patient care at the first try. Typically it can take 3-5 tries at $50K+ a pop before the majority can be said to be in remission.
It’s certainly *cheaper* to drive addicts to dangerous drugs like heroin where they’ll off themselves more quickly, but is it moral? It’s certainly best to keep folks from using in the first place, but given the culture today it’s hard to get the message across that something you do to yourself is dangerous, nor is our media even willing or able to promote such a message.
One thing that comes to mind is how about 20% of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were said to be addicted to heroin, but when they came back to their families and relative sanity in the U.S., 95% of them stopped. Instead of a 20% problem, it became a ~ 1% problem.
Now, granting real concerns about differences between heroin then and now and the existence of super-drugs like fentanyl, I have to wonder whether we can get some of that mojo back by being….shudder….a little bit more like the times in which I was born. I don’t think it’s bell bottoms and Woodstock, but there was something going on then that helped.
Aren’t you glad these guys addicted to drugs can get a gun so easily..
The “opioid crisis” is the one issue over which most people, decent people, tend to lose their compassion, believe everything they’re told, and opine with little to no knowledge. Many people turning to heroin now are in intractable pain (that means pain you wouldn’t wish on people you hate). The healthcare that is working just fine for them, thank you, (opioid therapy with extreme and appropriately-strict guidelines) has been ripped from them with no warning because some bureaucrat said so. That’s not patient care, that’s government with a very strong arm. I know a lot about this issue–enough to write a book. People in pain are devalued, and lies and misconceptions are parroted at an appalling level. I’m doing research and collecting stories that should scare the hell out of anyone living in a human body. For those who are buying this story about the “opioid crisis” I say this: Wait until it’s you or someone you love who has just had a total knee replacement and your doc hands you two weeks worth of the pharmaceutical doppelganger of Tylenol with Codeine, which is the pain relief equivalent of spitting on a house fire. Then expect to be able to comply with physical therapy, which is the real key to coming out of that kind of surgery with any level of success. A physical therapist told me the only people who are almost certain to scream during PT are post-op total joint replacement patients, and those are properly medicated ones. This is happening. Right now. I won’t even start on what’s happening to cancer patients… I’d love to have a talk with anyone willing to learn the truth, which boils down to government overreach, something conservatives and libertarians should be against. Yet they happily run after the bandwagon and jump.