Profits drive Prescription Opiate drugs which drive Heroin which drive deaths

Politics and religion
42

If you don’t use repercussions, the physicians won’t do it. No, seriously, the majority of them won’t. This isn’t a knock against physicians so much as acknowledging that we’re talking about a group that hospitals have to chase down just to get them to sign paperwork, sometimes even yank their privileges if it gets bad enough.

There are already several efforts in place. In this state, you many of these drugs you can’t even get a prescription from outside of a pain specialist of some kind. Your local family doc can’t or won’t do it. This, of course, doesn’t keep things cheap but there is what’s called a Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

There are flaws though… like actual shall we call arguments, drug wars, between the physician and the pharmacist. What do you do when a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription because he or she thinks there is a less potent drug that will do the same thing except… the physician chose the drug due to past history.

There isn’t going to be an easy answer but you at least have to compel providers to participate. Sure some would sign right up but what about the ones who refuse?

43

What about how physicians follow prescribed steps when dictated by insurance companies? I believe the repercussion is they don’t get paid, could that work?

44

Well what are we asking them to do . We know there is an opiate problem, but we also know there are people in pain. I don’t think anyone should have to suffer continuous pain if there is anything we can do to stop it. The ED departments of the local hospitals here will actually call each other up and warn them that a pill seeker is on the prowl. They’ll come through the door describing some extreme pain, but through whatever determination the providers use, it’s deemed their just trying to get pain meds… when that doesn’t work they’ll actually drive to the next hospital and try their ER. If a provider misses that behavior, that’s not really 100% their fault. You can do a lot of checks and still get it wrong.

But if someone has major surgery, needs some serious pain management to recover but somehow the family and physician misses their pain has turned into an addiction… that’s hard. Who do you blame for that? If there are better alternatives, drugs that aren’t as addicting, we need to use those. I suspect they must be available since news articles suggests this is less of an issue in other countries. In some cases though, in other countries, they have a longer time to recover before feeling the push to be at work at a 100%… now.

I know it’s sounds like circular logic, because it is since I am hesitant to penalize physicians at this time but at the same time without that, we’d wind up with the physicians doing the best they can already signing up which is not the group that’s needed. I mean… we have a similar but less sexy problem of physicians giving out antibiotics when they shouldn’t… or anti-depressants to teens who are just being, you know, teens.

45

NYT with some optimism.

[quote]
Drug overdose deaths in 2016 most likely exceeded 59,000, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the United States, according to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times.

The death count is the latest consequence of an escalating public health crisis: opioid addiction, now made more deadly by an influx of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and similar drugs. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50.

Although the data is preliminary, the Times’s best estimate is that deaths rose 19 percent over the 52,404 recorded in 2015. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017.[/quote]

46

It does and you will generate tolerance and some physical dependence within 4-6 weeks, but the amount of people who go from to that to living a life of addiction through recreationally sourced drugs must be so utterly vanishingly small as to not even be worth considering - which was my stated point.

Long term drug addiction is not physical dependence, it is psychological dependence. That’s why so many people relapse long after physical dependence has passed, and why addiction is so insidious. Ask any ex-smoker. Common sense tells you, you aren’t going to develop psychological dependence over the course of a single use prescription, it is a ludicrous idea. You have to actively pursue.

These drugs always have been and always will be widely used. They are exceptionally effective for controlling pain, especially of the acute variety. They are the only option for ‘palliative care’ - ie. trying to minimise the pure agony of someone dying over a period of years due to certain sorts of cancer. For people with non-terminal severe pain, well tough titties, there are no cures for you and no one gives a shit. Even with cancer pain, people will tire of anothers suffering within a few months. Anyone who thinks medical cannabis is a cure for all ills is simply young and naive - unfamiliar with the human condition. All drugs have their costs.

But opiates aren’t going anywhere, and I’m tired of reading these bullshit moralising tales mocked up as journalism. There is a real parallel with the prim Victorian moralism which drove Prohibition, and it’s part and parcel of the black and white view of the world that political correctness encourages - get rid of these drugs and all will be better. Characterising opoid addiction as an epidemic is absurd - it is not a contagious disease. It’s a simple desire to whip up hysteria in their readership, who in fairness, appear to want to that.

Widespread youth drug addiction has always been about one thing - boredom, lack of opportunity, and lack of a greater unifying cause for young people to believe in. The NYT tries to tie it into a coherent narrative with their other policies wrt to the mid west, but they can’t because they have no coherent national agenda - they don’t even have a coherent agenda regarding this issue. Not once have I heard them offer a constructive solution, or consider exactly how strict they desire supply to be. They are talking utter shit - it’s one of the times where it may fairly be called liberal bullshit - there is an unbearable smugness which accompanies this asinine and hysterical campaign against the current drug of choice for the lower class.

Eventually the campaign will lose its wow factor and they will drop it, like it never existed. You’ve already done fentanyl, there are only so many opiate derivatives you can reprint as if they are somehow news, when they’ve been around since the 1960’s. You may also be surprised to learn that the pills you consume are not the pure drug - so what exactly is the relevance of that photo? It’s just clickbait trash. In a nation without universal health care, surely they can find something less morally opaque to campaign on.

47

And smoking doesn’t lead to a higher risk in cancer right? I’m sure the media just made that up too, and the physicians, and the smokers and the families who put them in the ground.

48

Oh dear. Are you saying I deny addiction exists, or doesn’t occur in a medical setting, or something equally dumb? You’ll just have to read my post again and read it carefully. No offence. I guess you’re worked up about what I said about addiction from short term use, right? I can’t think what else you’d be being sarcastic about, as your posts are normally well considered, even if they do ramble on a bit.

It happens. All addicts have to take it a first time somewhere, and that could as easily be in a medical setting as a recreational one.

But these things are routinely used in a medical environment and have been for decades. If it was that simple, we’d be routinely seeing people have various operations and become addicted. But that doesn’t happen. The % is fuck all. The spurious history that’s been put together is that it all started with the marketing of slow release oxycodone. But prior to this they’d hand out oxycodone in pills.

I think all that happened is that the NYT guy who wrote a book on it isn’t very bright, and he simply sees that a lot of addicts got their first taste from a doctor, and thinks he’s found the cause of the problem. But he hasn’t. All he’s found is a meaningless correlation.

The real issue is how they get out into the community, which becomes an issue of supply as I stated earlier. If you’ve got a nice car, the only way you can be sure it won’t be stolen is to lock it up in a garage and never drive it.

It becomes a policy issue, but the tradeoff’s and implementations are never discussed. All the articles are sensationalist. The guys with a painful disease and taking opiates are all on these humiliating ‘opiate contracts’, which I’m pretty sure no one would dare to offer to a cancer patient. That supply is strictly controlled. But if you’re going to deal, taking the left overs from peoples prescriptions won’t do it. Conning doctors for a script would also be low return. Surely the stuff is just being smuggled into the country from somewhere like all the other drugs? They never go into it, probably because they have no idea.

49

You don’t present a single fact in this statement or the one before. You rail against the medical industries’ findings as well as the approach the media takes with absolutely nothing to back your opinion. Nothing at all. I am going to take the data from scientific and medical journals over your claim this is all to do about nothing. No offense.

50

Well you haven’t even stated what you disagree with me about, so it’s a bit hard to have an argument.

Perhaps we should just have a futile yelling contest?

I think my point is pretty clear, but I’ll clarify it succintly for you.

I don’t deny that there has been a rise in overdose deaths, or that it is an issue of importance.

I object to:

  • The lack of rational debate regarding how this problem is to be approached

  • The lack of rational debate about the consequences of restricting supply

  • The low standard of reporting, which does nothing to elucidate the complexities of responding to this issue, It simply states over and over again that there is an ‘epidemic’

If you’ve got some sort of problem with that, well I’m sorry to hear it. They are fairly uncontroversial statements.

51

Yeah so… no data for any of your statements and claimed expertise about addiction. I am not entirely surprised. You can certainly go back and reread your statements and see you’ve made several claims with no data to back them. You clearly don’t know a lot about addiction, and certainly not more than the physicians and portions of the medical community voicing their concerns and presenting data to back those concerns.

I think most people are also aware of additives in drugs. Epidemic can also be used as an adjective, and has been, to describe things like looting, drive-by shootings and etc. Calling it an epidemic does not mean they are saying it’s an infectious disease anymore than saying someone is dog-tired implies they’re a literal dog. Of course I’d know, for sure, about the appropriate word usage if you backed up any of your statements with a source of some kind.

52

You do realise the only data anyone has is overdose deaths, don’t you?

I am not sure what other data there is to argue about, except prescription rates.

But I don’t contest that, so it appears you don’t have any point to make, other than to disagree with me.

No one has any data about how many people take opiates in a medical setting and later become addicts. There is no record of ‘number of addicts’.

I don’t think anyone in this thread is an addiction expert, but what is the relevance? Physical and psychological dependence and addiction are just very basic and uncontroversial statements. Have you not heard of them before? It’s common knowledge.

So exactly what the heck are you on about? Seems like you want to disagree with me, but can’t do it without saying ‘data’.

53

I’m sure you know better than the CDC and HHS.

Also you seem to be an addiction expert, right before you say you aren’t one.
Apparently opiods aren’t addictive either. Okay, sure.

Good talk. Make sure to be extra condescending while providing no proof, expertise or any form of evidence.

54

I’m guessing you are just totally ignorant of the current state of is abuse in the country.

Cause it’s not vanishingly small.

You aren’t real well informed here.

https://addictionunscripted.com/real-content/uploads/2016/01/Fig-1.png

55

You’re talking in circles. I think it will be more appropriate to watch you chase your tail then try and step in an address the fact that your’e first an expert, then you’re not, then it’s all in their head, but then it’s suddenly physical again, and then we only know about overdoses and all the other data out there, which you are apparently not reading, isn’t there and then it’s common knowledge so no data needed.

When you’re done running in circles and demanding everyone else explain your position for you, let me know. No offense.

56

You seem to want to have your cake (addition rates are not increasing) and eat it too (death by opioids have been dramatically increasing, prescriptions for opioids have dramatically increased). Is that the hill you’re trying to die on?

57

You sook, psychological addiction doesn’t mean it’s ‘in your head’. The reason you guys haven’t heard of it because you all are genuinely ignorant of addiction issues. All you know is what you’ve read in these low quality articles.

I haven’t stated that addiction isn’t rising, but you guys interpret it that wat because you’re not capable of reasoned disagreement.

My position is I doubt very much it’s a medically driven issue, and is simply a rise in drug use. These things go up and down, and drus go in and oit of fashion. Unemployment is a big factor. Wanking on about the medical side of it is a waste of everyone’s time.

Anyways, enjoy your clickbait and these little outrage festivals you have together.

58

Yeah dude, no one has heard of psychological addiction.

Seriously, stop pretending like you know anything about this topic. You clearly don’t.

59

Yeah, I know more about addiction than what these articles show. Detox and withdrawals, these are consideration for anyone who requires emergency procedures because you don’t typically want them to go through these problems in addition to their emergency. Some hospitals will actually have some of these drugs on sight, including beer, to keep alcoholics from going through withdrawals… and that’s not because of mental anguish.

But once again, you’ve provided no data to actually support your claims or opinion… most likely because the only articles you could possible find to support your outlandish point-of-view are other… get this, media articles! When you find something from a reputable source, feel free to come back. Until then, just acknowledge all you’re doing is spouting an oddball opinion and it’s not our responsibility to support your circle logic; it’s yours.

60

Duuuuuudddeeee

There is nothing to know. People are dying of opiate overdoses and everyone is at a loss what to do about it. Been this way for as long as I can remember.

You are a young guy, and you still think the world is black and white. You’ll understand at some point that there is no solution, and that medical marijuana will bring it’s own follies. You might even figure out that characterising increased drug use as an epidemic is unhelpful sensationalism.

61

You’re completely ignoring all the data presented here and elsewhere. Things have gotten a lot worse.

Look at the chart like 3 posts up ffs.

And you’re the one that revived the thread to… discount the entire thing without any sort of proof.