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America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

economist.com

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Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#221

Post by [deleted] »

astrodust wrote: post #200
dsmithatx wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Denmark. They had a huge problem with robberies and started giving legal pure Heroin shots to users. They also helped them find jobs. No more deaths and no more black market for Heroin. Hence burglaries also went away. It looks like our current President is looking at cracking down on pot again though so, I don't imagine we'll have a sensible drug policy anytime soon. Only one motivated by profits.

Some supervised injection sites are also able to test the drugs to make sure they're not adulterated in some way that could be harmful. That means fewer trips to the emergency room, less police paperwork, not to mention there's an opportunity to mitigate drug use with therapy and treatment.

[deleted]

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#222

Post by TTPrograms »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #33
oxide wrote: post #24

Maintenance treatments with long-acting opioids like methadone tend to come with a withdrawal that lasts for months. Meanwhile, short-acting opiates like heroin have a withdrawal period that lasts about a week. Is it any wonder methadone patients switch back to heroin when they try to quit for good? Mark my words, this isn't going away or getting any better. You can prosecute doctors, regulate all you want, burn fiel…

I've had friends get fucked up by head shop and online Kratom. It's very far from benign.

I've had friends get killed by grocery store alcohol. It's very far from benign.

See how productive this is?

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#223

Post by sonthonax »

moyang0913 wrote: post #216

Speaking from Singapore here. We don't have any drug problem at all. Drug dealers get death penalty. It's illegal to consume, too. You are put in jail. I pity your poor citizens who can only resort to legalization. Addicts are not healthy for the society or for the economy. It's just a matter of very bad (crime) or bad (jobless and getting high at home, disturbing neighbors). Government use tax I paid to supply water…

While Singapore has no issues laundering the dirty money of every scumbag around the world.

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#224

Post by peteretep »

hive_mind wrote: post #208
interfixus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Denmark is this? Doesn't resemble the one I live in. Neither the robberies problem nor the legal pure heroin, and most certainly not the disappearance of burglaries - not statistically, not anecdotally, and not according to the several people of my acquaintance who have had it happen to them.

In the USA, there's a fantasy Denmark that exists in the media. In the fantasy Denmark, there's no crime, all the women are hot blondes who never get fat, there's cheap weed every where (and apparently free clean heroin), the furniture is sleek, all the men are feminists who never objectify women (there's no porn), the school system is fantastic (every child is good at math), the healthcare is free and high-quality,…

    > the healthcare is free and high-quality
    > Pretty much like the rest of fantasy
    > Europe.
Isn't high-quality healthcare that's "free at the point of use" available in most of real Western Europe too?

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#225

Post by hackermailman »

tptacek wrote: post #30
padobson wrote: post #12

I live in Trumbull County in Ohio, the dark red county in North East Ohio. We recently had 23 (non-fatal) overdoses in a two-day period[0]. That's roughly .01% of the county's total population - so yeah, it's getting bad here. There were recently two shootings within a mile of my house. Several people dead. Both shootings were drug related. I can't help but look around and believe that the needs these folks are tryin…

Isn't the counterargument to this to point out the Oxycontin abuse epidemic? Doctors are prescribing years worth of opiates to patients. There have been suggestions that Purdue Pharma's formulation of Oxy practically guarantees dependence, because of the way it's dosed. Are the people dying of heroin overdoses in white rural Ohio starting on heroin, or transitioning to it after prescription opioids become too expensi…

Here in Canada heroin is also associated with less violence since its relatively inexpensive from the source so losing a load from India to customs isn't the end of the world to a drug dealer's operation whereas cocaine is traded on large loans, so any loss means violence is the only answer to get the money back.

What's happened the last few years is even cheaper synthetic opioids is available from Chinese factories, and as it's legal there no connections are needed to export it, so mid-tier and lower street gangs here have made their own startups buying and exporting the cheap synthetics (Fentanyl, Carfentanil ect) directly effectively bypassing the traditional pipeline that was bringing in heroin for decades. Naturally this has lead to a ton of violence and overdoses as users get synthetic adulterated heroin instead of their usual dose and gangs fight over control of the much more profitable synthetic trade.

When China and other countries makes the synthetics illegal (China already made it illegal to export to Canada a few weeks ago, not sure about the US) it will go back to being too expensive to self import since petty gangs here will need connections there, and the heroin pipeline will resume again with overdoses falling until of course, another loophole legal synthetic is discovered.

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#226

Post by peteretep »

zkms wrote: post #212
padobson wrote: post #12

I live in Trumbull County in Ohio, the dark red county in North East Ohio. We recently had 23 (non-fatal) overdoses in a two-day period[0]. That's roughly .01% of the county's total population - so yeah, it's getting bad here. There were recently two shootings within a mile of my house. Several people dead. Both shootings were drug related. I can't help but look around and believe that the needs these folks are tryin…

> Maybe the answer isn't to make heroin available OTC at Walgreens Actually, in UK you can get actual opioids (as co-codamol) behind the counter, without a prescription. Funny how they don't seem to have a disastrous and deadly opioid epidemic like the US has. I'd so much rather live where people can get cheap pharmaceutical grade heroin at the pharmacy than where people who need opioids end up smashing windows to st…

    > Actually, in UK you can get actual
    > opioids (as co-codamol) behind the
    > counter, without a prescription.
    > Funny how they don't seem to have a
    > disastrous and deadly opioid epidemic
    > like the US has.
Cocodamol is 8mg of codeine to 500mg of paracetemol. To get 240mg of codeine -- equivalent to 10mg of oral oxycodone -- you'd need to take 30 cocodamol pills, which is 15g of paracetemol. If you present at a hospital having taken more than 12g, they'll put you on a acetylcysteine IV (and generally assume you were trying to end your life).

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#227

Post by pfortuny »

peteretep wrote: post #224
hive_mind wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, there's a fantasy Denmark that exists in the media. In the fantasy Denmark, there's no crime, all the women are hot blondes who never get fat, there's cheap weed every where (and apparently free clean heroin), the furniture is sleek, all the men are feminists who never objectify women (there's no porn), the school system is fantastic (every child is good at math), the healthcare is free and high-quality,…

> the healthcare is free and high-quality > Pretty much like the rest of fantasy > Europe. Isn't high-quality healthcare that's "free at the point of use" available in most of real Western Europe too?

Well, as long as you are willing to wait about six months for knee surgery, yes, it is free.

Or for any other type of intervention.

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#229

Post by DanBC »

curun1r wrote: post #214
DanBC wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with pain deserve treatment for that pain. For people with short term pain, or who are at the end of life, opioids can be a good choice. For people with long term pain opioids can, rarely, be a good choice, if other things have been tried first, and if there's a careful package of care. Most people with long term pain need variations of / combinations of: 1) Access to evidence based pain management specialist…

I'm not sure if this is inherent in your #1, but there should be an increased focus on alternative methods for dealing with pain. For instance, since starting meditation training, I haven't needed so much as a single Ibuprofen. It's not that my incidence of pain has decreased, but my way of thinking about/reacting to that pain has changed dramatically and I can now make just about any pain quickly fade into the backg…

Yes, I agree. Whenever I've mentioned cognitive behaviour therapy for pain control, or meditation for pain control, it derailed conversation into discussion about pain that was "real" or "all in the head", with some people refusing to see that in some cases there's no difference: the patient is in real pain, the pain is debilitating, and the treatment has a psychological component.

Re: America’s opioid epidemic is worsening

#230

Post by wutbrodo »

pnathan wrote: post #148
tbrownaw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading somewhere about how a decent chunk of drug users just plain grow out of it as they grow into life roles that it doesn't quite work for. Nothing to do with theoretical long term consequences, just "this is more trouble than it's worth".

I'd concur.... anecdotes from reading Reddit suggest that's true for a number of pot or hallucinogen users. They move on to more fulfilling roles in life.

Well sure, for the safest, least-addictive drugs around. For more dangerous drugs like alcohol or the ones discussed in this thread, "growing out of" an abuse habit is orders of magnitude more difficult.
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