The opioid epidemic is projected to claim 1.22 million U.S. lives this decade without new efforts to stem the crisis, according to a report that traces the roots of the problem and offers in-depth solutions.
Opioid crisis? You mean the one that the DEA created?
Let me tell you a story. A couple of decades ago, a pharmaceutical company invented a new opioid drug that they hoped (at the time, at least) was a way to make a powerful pain medicine less addictive. It was formulated such that people didn’t get an instant buzz off of it, a so-called slow-release design. It became popular, and as it became more popular those who use drugs recreationally learned to subvert the slow-release design.
Then it became immensely popular.
The DEA is a bizarre government agency which, by law, isn’t allowed to question its own purpose. But that makes sense right? If you were to create a government agency to go stomp on babies’ heads, you wouldn’t want them sitting around mulling over whether murdering infants was a bad thing. You’d make a rule that says they can’t ever hire anyone who has ever showed any inclination towards or sympathy for the idea that babies shouldn’t have their skulls crushed with jackboots. If you didn’t make such a rule, how would your bureau even last a year?
The DEA then shuts down so-called “pill mills” under the theory that they’re helping people. These people are addicts, and (if you believe the propaganda) would do literally anything to get their next fix. Only they can’t get their fix with oxycontin anymore, so they have to find a substitute.
This substitute was dirty street heroin laced with (and fuck, I wish I wasn’t make this up) elephant tranquilizer. Shit so potent that if the greasy-haired shitweasel dealer gets a tenth of a drop more of the stuff in the talcum power he claims is heroin, people will die. Like, don’t collect $200, go directly to the morgue dead. But they’re addicts, and this is the only remaining substitute.
So these people are using this as a substitute for the pharmaceutical grade, measured dose, regulated by the FDA and supervised by trained pharmaceutical engineers drug that they used to use. The drug that no one ever died of an overdose from (excepting intentional suicides).
And if you think I’m exaggerating here, let’s look at a quote from the link:
The report, two years in the making, calls for immediate action to quell the rising tide of addiction and overdose deaths in the United States and Canada,
What comes first in their list? Are they concerned about “overdose deaths”? No. The first item in their list is… “addiction”. That’s the real problem, you see. Not “deaths”. Sure, they’ll get around to solving those too, eventually, as soon as they deal with the real priority, the “addictions”. Because it’d be better for people to be dead than addicts. If all the addicts die, hell, that actually solves the addiction problem. So rather than a list of priorities, this is closer to a “problem and solution” list.
“Unrestrained profit-seeking and regulatory failure instigated the opioid crisis 25 years ago, and since then, little has been done to stop it,”
I don’t even know what to say to this shit. More than a thousand deaths per week… but those deaths didn’t start 25 years ago. They started once Purdue Pharma was demonized and the DEA cracked down on pill mills.
We now live in a world where grandmas dying of bone cancer suffer their last few weeks of life on Earth in agony because their pain doctors are either too brainwashed to understand that there are superior alternatives to scrip-strength tylenol or too in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing.
And that happens because people like yourself read horseshit like this link and believe it.
Hey there, since you’re new to Beehaw, I’d like to remind you of our core principle of being nice. This post feels both aggressive and accusatory and doesn’t particularly strike me as nice. You’ve jumped to a few conclusions about what I think and stances that I hold which are simply incorrect, and in the future I’d appreciate if you asked me for clarification.
I don’t even know what to say to this shit. More than a thousand deaths per week… but those deaths didn’t start 25 years ago. They started once Purdue Pharma was demonized and the DEA cracked down on pill mills.
there are probably more things factually wrong with your post here than this, but “Purdue Pharma was demonized” is the most egregious one to me. it’s not really in question that Purdue played a major role in the first wave of opioid deaths through its mass marketing of opioids, lies about the addictive nature of the opioids they produced–particularly Oxycontin–and generally callous and dismissive nature of what they were doing despite knowing the damage they were causing. the most i think you can say is they simply haven’t been as disproportionately responsible for subsequent waves of opioid addiction–but they in large part kicked off what we now consider the opioid epidemic, and i think doing anything but raking them for that is basically malpractice.
Opioid crisis? You mean the one that the DEA created?
Let me tell you a story. A couple of decades ago, a pharmaceutical company invented a new opioid drug that they hoped (at the time, at least) was a way to make a powerful pain medicine less addictive. It was formulated such that people didn’t get an instant buzz off of it, a so-called slow-release design. It became popular, and as it became more popular those who use drugs recreationally learned to subvert the slow-release design.
Then it became immensely popular.
The DEA is a bizarre government agency which, by law, isn’t allowed to question its own purpose. But that makes sense right? If you were to create a government agency to go stomp on babies’ heads, you wouldn’t want them sitting around mulling over whether murdering infants was a bad thing. You’d make a rule that says they can’t ever hire anyone who has ever showed any inclination towards or sympathy for the idea that babies shouldn’t have their skulls crushed with jackboots. If you didn’t make such a rule, how would your bureau even last a year?
The DEA then shuts down so-called “pill mills” under the theory that they’re helping people. These people are addicts, and (if you believe the propaganda) would do literally anything to get their next fix. Only they can’t get their fix with oxycontin anymore, so they have to find a substitute.
This substitute was dirty street heroin laced with (and fuck, I wish I wasn’t make this up) elephant tranquilizer. Shit so potent that if the greasy-haired shitweasel dealer gets a tenth of a drop more of the stuff in the talcum power he claims is heroin, people will die. Like, don’t collect $200, go directly to the morgue dead. But they’re addicts, and this is the only remaining substitute.
So these people are using this as a substitute for the pharmaceutical grade, measured dose, regulated by the FDA and supervised by trained pharmaceutical engineers drug that they used to use. The drug that no one ever died of an overdose from (excepting intentional suicides).
And if you think I’m exaggerating here, let’s look at a quote from the link:
What comes first in their list? Are they concerned about “overdose deaths”? No. The first item in their list is… “addiction”. That’s the real problem, you see. Not “deaths”. Sure, they’ll get around to solving those too, eventually, as soon as they deal with the real priority, the “addictions”. Because it’d be better for people to be dead than addicts. If all the addicts die, hell, that actually solves the addiction problem. So rather than a list of priorities, this is closer to a “problem and solution” list.
I don’t even know what to say to this shit. More than a thousand deaths per week… but those deaths didn’t start 25 years ago. They started once Purdue Pharma was demonized and the DEA cracked down on pill mills.
We now live in a world where grandmas dying of bone cancer suffer their last few weeks of life on Earth in agony because their pain doctors are either too brainwashed to understand that there are superior alternatives to scrip-strength tylenol or too in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing.
And that happens because people like yourself read horseshit like this link and believe it.
Hey there, since you’re new to Beehaw, I’d like to remind you of our core principle of being nice. This post feels both aggressive and accusatory and doesn’t particularly strike me as nice. You’ve jumped to a few conclusions about what I think and stances that I hold which are simply incorrect, and in the future I’d appreciate if you asked me for clarification.
there are probably more things factually wrong with your post here than this, but “Purdue Pharma was demonized” is the most egregious one to me. it’s not really in question that Purdue played a major role in the first wave of opioid deaths through its mass marketing of opioids, lies about the addictive nature of the opioids they produced–particularly Oxycontin–and generally callous and dismissive nature of what they were doing despite knowing the damage they were causing. the most i think you can say is they simply haven’t been as disproportionately responsible for subsequent waves of opioid addiction–but they in large part kicked off what we now consider the opioid epidemic, and i think doing anything but raking them for that is basically malpractice.