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As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

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91–100 of 118 posts

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#91

Why are the opoid manufacturers who are creating this addiction in the first place not being billed for it?

How did they create it? Consumers can't buy direct, can they? There's always a middleman. Why not blame pharmacies or better yet, doctors?

> How did they create it?

They mislead doctors about safe usage of their product.

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#92
"In recent weeks, Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones has drawn national attention for vowing that his deputies will never carry Narcan because he doesn’t want them playing the role of paramedic."

This is one of the sickest, most disgusting, most disturbing, most inhumane things I have ever heard. I guess police are not satisfied with just shooting unarmed people, now they have to let sick addicts die. So they can save $50, an amount that would be even less if it could be negotiated by a program like Medicaid or Medicare. At least it finally confirms the fact that a lot of police, like Jones, would rather stand around, do nothing, and let the people they are supposed to serve and protect die while they watch. What a sick, disgusting mother fucker. No, there's isn't a word in the English language that even begins to describe this lowlife. And the give this piece of shit a fucking gun? I wonder how many he's murdered so far without impunity?

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#94
post #88
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "organized crime," I assume you mean something other what's traditionally thought of as organized crime, e.g. the Mafia, but I can't tell what. > I presume she managed to avoid becoming a junky because she has a pretty stable day-to-day life. While circumstance and upbringing are factors for addition, I think it's accepted that there is also a biological component; your mom may be inherently less prone to becoming…

Addiction is fundamentally about not being able to regulate ones nervous system and looking for external triggers for dopamine release. This is almost always linked to developmental and shock trauma earlier in life.

That doesn't account for the genetic component.

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#96
post #75
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Civil War today would look like Afghanistan or Iraq, not like the one we had before. It won't be pretty and will probably end in authoritarianism the likes we've never seen.

~50% of all US war casualties occurred during the Civil War. It was very nasty, even if only 3% of the total US population died in direct fighting.

Yes, it was a gruesome war. By Afghanistan and Iraq, I meant more insurgent type war rather than sanctioned armies fighting. Liberal states would have insurgent right wingers and Conservative states would have insurgent left wingers. Insurgents would be fighting the opposite faction of insurgent, and everyone will be armed to the teeth. We saw a glimpse of how that would play out in rural areas with the Oregon stand off. I suspect the cities would be something like we saw in Ukrane with their stand in the main square with the firewall, except a lot more shooting. There would be massive food shortages. It would be crazy and unpleasant and not a damn thing will have been resolved.

I realized I was being vague.

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#97
Regardless of whether or not you regard opioid addiction as a disease, please please consider the slippery slope you're sledding down if you buy into this. Who's going to deny insulin to people whose credit card statements show more than 3 Dairy Queen visits this month? Who's going to deny chemo to people who smoked too many Pall Malls, in your opinion? This reeks from top to bottom, and yes, narcan isn't nearly as expensive as chemo, so yes, the slippery slope is pretty much guaranteed to go there. Proceed with caution.

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#98
post #44
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'd be far more cost-effective to reduce the need for acute care by providing access to addiction treatment before things get to this point. Easier said than done I suppose. Johann Hari has pointed out that it's very effective to just give heroin addicts pure heroin and a safe place to inject it. Switzerland has 'essentially' [edit] eliminated opiate deaths with this strategy: [edit: added 'essentially' in respons…

In reports about the Swiss strategy and in this story about Hari I see plausible claims that Switzerland has eliminated deaths due to needle-borne HIV, but no claims anywhere that prescribing heroin has eliminated all opiate fatalities. Can you cite a more rigorous source?

Not quite "eliminated", and I don't have a source in English, but drug overdose deaths fell by about two thirds between 1995 (Heroin prescriptions started in about 1994) and 2012:

http://www.suchtmonitoring.ch/de/3/7.html?opioide-mortalitat

In 2015, there were about 10 cases of needle-borne HIV infections in Switzerland, out of a bit more than 500 overall.

Re: As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved

#99
post #51
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years ago, politicians were tricked into trusting organized crime to tend to the health of people who are drawn to opiates. Those politicians are dead & gone, but we're still stuck with their mistake. My mother broke her wrist 6 months ago, and was given opiates to deal with the pain of having a plate put in her wrist. She did not become an opiate addict. I presume she managed to avoid becoming a junky because sh…

When the drug war started, politicians had a problem: banning someone from ingesting wasn't something the US government had the power to do. We were a free country after all. They had to bend the constitution by implementing a tax rather than a ban, and simply never issued tax stamps. Fast forward 100 years, the federal, state and local governments can ban anything they damn well please with little to no resistance,…

Would there be more deaths? Surely legalisation/decriminalisation of some drugs gives a guide has to what happens when people can get what they want. Obviously the drugs that are becoming more freely available are of the safer variety but the scare mongers told us horror stories about what was going to happen, and it hasn't worked out as they stated.
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