Posted on 05/14/2016 7:52:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
Nearly every 12 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a drug overdose. People in communities across America are abusing both prescription pain killers and heroin. It is an epidemic. No one is immune; it is a sad reality that is playing out across the country, including in my own district in Southwest Michigan.
There were 13 suspected overdoses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the first quarter of 2013, up from 9 in the first quarter of 2012. Behind these numbers are real folks, and their families, suffering. In 2008, we lost Amy Bousfield, an 18 year-old graduate of Portage Central High School. In 2012, Marissa King died at 21 years of age. She began using heroin in 2009, despite having lost two friends to the drug - one of them being Amy Bousfield.
This crisis does not discriminate between large and small, urban and rural, rich and poor. A recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one in five Americans say they have a family member who's been addicted to prescription painkillers.
It's a frightening prospect, and we must face the opioid epidemic head on. House Republicans are committed to doing just that, working to advance meaningful legislation to combat this scourge.
At the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I chair, we've held a number of hearings over the last year with testimony from many experts on the frontlines. What we've learned has been eye opening. Federal policies toward opioid addiction in the past have often overemphasized a one-size-fits all law enforcement approach. It's clear through our listening sessions that this is a public health crisis, and that our strategy should reflect the complex dynamic between public health and criminal activity. We now know we cannot simply arrest our way out of this epidemic.
So we've worked to advance bipartisan solutions that address this public health crisis. From helping newborns who are born into addiction, and promoting state prescription drug monitoring programs. Additionally, just last month we passed 11 more bipartisan bills to address this crisis that are now ready for consideration by the full House of Representatives.
Our work will continue. We owe this effort to the past, present, and sadly, future victims of the opioid epidemic - our neighbors, friends, and family, across every part of the country and every demographic group. We owe it to the families of Amy Bousfield and Marissa King. We owe it to all of those in our communities who are suffering from addiction.
People will just learn to extract it.
Townhall is getting pretty stupid with their pictures, in this case a person smoking to illustrate an article about opioid addiction!
“so a person can not overdose accidently”
My purpose and goal is to end accidental overdoses.
Deliberate breach of safeguards can get you killed, just like stepping into the highway one hundred feet from me while cars are streaming past.
People bombed out on pills can easily lose count of the number swallowed and of the amount of time passed since the last one was swallowed.
True that.
I’ve also read (here and elsewhere) that the opium production in Afghanistan (#1 in anything for the first time ever) was down close to zero under the Taliban, until someone thought it a good idea to ‘liberate’ Afghanistan from the Taliban... Winning! as Charlie Sheen might put it... seriously, who gives a crap about that sh!thole and why meddle there, again? 200 years of attempts to bring civilization there have all failed. Now they’re back up to former levels in production and the scum are flooding the West (Europe, mostly) as ‘refugees’....
Those same people (G.W.Bush) forbade the military from engaging in operations to eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan claiming an economic justification (insanity). Just carrying on in the great tradition of trafficking in drugs as did G.H.W. and Jeb Bush.
100%
This is not a public health crisis. It is a religious crisis...
“And 92 people die every day in car crashes. Perhaps they’ll ban cars too.”
How many of those were on account of drunk driving?
There is only one way of ending the opioid epidemic.
close the borders. Stop immigration.
Kill any government official of US who may be taking kickback from the epidemic.
Defund all hospitals and programs dealing with opioid addiction.
Bizarre Opioid Induced Constipation Super Bowl 50 commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X276jp-vvRY
Plenty, I’m sure.
Nope, Mexican gangs have flooded the country FIRST. Supply first in this case.
I like the way you problem solve. But a junkie would learn how to concentrate the formula.
We have to realize that as long as there will be pleasurable addictive substances, we will have this problem. We need to teach our young what it is like to BE addicted. You won’t be you any more, you won’t be a good person any more, you won’t even be a decent person. You would hurt your elderly grandmother to steal $20 from her purse. They need to know that the high will be short lived and that once addicted, they will mostly feel like when they’ve been underwater for almost a minute and really need air. If they’ve enjoyed the flu, the stomach flu, and chicken pox at the same time, they’d love addiction.
We need to teach them all that, do our best to keep them away from addictive drugs, help the addicted including commitment against their will, and then stop wars on drugs.
The open borders of globalism are great. /s/
Well, around here when folks get cut off from their pills they go to heroin, black tar from Mexico. That’s fairly new, at least in these parts. The pills are actually more expensive than the heroin, which is one of the reasons folks switch.
As far as Mexican gangs, that started multiple decades ago.
Freegards
Word around here is that dealers are randomly giving fatal doses, so the rest of their clientele think they must be selling the really good stuff.
Globalists know: control people's pain, and you control those people. And for the elderly, chronic pain can be so bad that death would be a preferable alternative, which would fit in with New World Order plans nicely.
To reiterate your point: to combat this issue (some might cynically say to employ gov drug bureaucrats who have less to do since marijuana viewpoints have changed), they punish the people, especially the elderly, who most need this treatment. A doctor has to choose between risking his career and medical license and using his unique, trained professional knowledge to treat genuine chronic pain in old people? Logic and human nature answers that question: you're going to save yourself and your family and your income. Who can blame them.
That's ridiculous. It would make them too "hot". No way, IMHO...
How’s that novel going? :)
Good post.
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