Demonization of people who manufacture drugs.
As if the government can do anything constructive here.
The problem would be self limiting if drugs were legal.
Good. Sometimes, a person is in really bad pain (such as gout) and doctors prescribe Motrin. If you ask for a real painkiller, they check the “asking for opiates” box and you’ll never get them. If you don’t ask, they assume that Motrin is good enough.
Yep, big coal, big Ag, big oil, big auto, and every other big and small business are fighting to survive the attacks of a monstrous government that has the power to take any and all of them down. It is in part why so many of them have left the country. As Marx called them ,the evil capitalists.
How many of these deaths are directly attributable to the pharmaceutical? Just because the overdose deaths are rising in tandem means nothing. What is does mean is that there is a rising problem with both the pharmaceutical and illegal opioid usage. It is quite easy to distinguish what percentage the pharmaceutical opioids do play. I didn't read the entire article to see if they actually get into those numbers, however, something tells me that is most likely not the case. If the results show that the illegal opiods are far more likely to cause overdose death, then the pharmaceutical opioids would prove to be the safer route for addicts.
When you start a practice, or relocate, your first 60-90 days are overwhelmed wiith drug addicts trying to scam you for narcotics. Some of them are decent actors.
If you take call for a group, you will get 2-3 calls a night begging for pain medicine, from patients you don’t know and can’t look up easily. Some of THEM are pretty good on the phone.
If you have a specialty practice and don’t do surgery, like me, you can take the stance that you don’t prescribe those drugs. I’ve written 2 or 3 Schedule II drugs in the past ten years.
But if you do general medicine, or if you’re a surgeon, you will get beaten by scammers a lot when you’re young. Their success rate falls with your experience, but it never goes to zero.
It’s already apparent to me that the “war on doctors who prescribe opioids” is having the desired effect. Patients with chronic real pain, patients with cancer, patients with unfixable painful injuries?
They’re collateral damage. But (oh, yeah) they CAN smoke dope with a doctors note. Already, there are “practices” opening up next to marijuana dispensaries (you can’t co-locate) where you can get your doctor’s note for $500.
Legal or not, demand is the problem. Way, way too many people have a spiritual sickness for which drugs are the palliative. Don’t fix that? The problem is unsolvable.
-given this as the source, I don't believe it--
So if patients can’t get opiate prescriptions legally at the doctors offices, they will get the pills on the street high cost and of dubious quality.
I’m sure there are plenty of Pharma factories in Mexico that manufacture opiates. What’s to stop a Mexican drug cartel from adding oxycodone to their inventory?
Just as in other cases (shoe bomber necessitates we take off our shoes at the airport, smurfers seeking psuedoephedrine for meth manufacture necessitates we show ID to purchase decongestants) the idiots of the world make it difficult for everyone else.
I don’t know why the DEA is going to penalize innocent people in pain for a bunch of stoners.
Friend took hydrocodone for years for chronic pain (neck and back surgeries). It was cheap and allowed him some control over dosage in that he could cut back when he felt okay. In fact, he had worked out a routine that allowed him to function relatively well on 25% of the allowable dose. Then Florida changed the law regarding prescribing opiates because of abuse and negative publicity. Subsequently he was taken off hydrocodone. Since then he has been through multiple more expensive drugs, physical therapy, trigger point injections, nerve ablations, epidurals, and even Botox injections. A lot of pain, expense and wasted effort because suddenly he couldn’t be trusted to take a pill. Perhaps this is why our medical costs are sky high in that we ignore the older and cheaper remedies that work.
meanwhile
"According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.21 million abortions performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. This amounts to 3,322 abortions per day."
also
"Purdue Pharma, for example, the maker of OxyContin, pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges that it misrepresented the drug as "abuse resistant"...
they did this by adding so much acetaminophen that folks died of liver failure before they could abuse the drug
If anything, in the US we don’t use opioids ENOUGH to relieve pain. They should be easier to prescribe.
“While opioids are critical for cancer patients and those in terminal pain, opioid abuse, including heroin and prescription drugs has been called the worst drug epidemic in American history.”
Who do I care more about, a cancer patient, or some stoned idiot? Gosh that tough.
At the same time they fight to keep marijuana listed a Schedule 1 narcotic. Sad.
I hate big pharma because of how powerful they are; they don’t care about their products’ safety and some of their products are literally forced by law onto the most vulnerable of us (babies and children) without big pharma having ANY product responsibility or liability.
HOWEVER, I’m all for opiates being widely available. We need to educate people about opiates and people need to ask for help from their loved ones when they are given prescriptions. Help your loved one get off them after pain events or surgeries. Opiates are very valuable. Suffering is not necessary. I’ve had 6 major surgeries, 2 brain, 4 c sections. I am grateful to opiated to get you over the otherwise unbearable pain, and I know all by myself when to stop taking them. But it’s ok to need help stopping. They are addictive. But they give quality of life back too.
If everyone understood how opiates work, their ghastly side effects (including constipation), and how to maximize their potential to do good, it would help. Doctors just give you “something for the pain” without enough instruction.
“Take one of these when you arrive home after surgery. Don’t take it on an empty stomach. Then, wait until the pain becomes a 6 on the scale before taking another, or 12 hours, whichever is farther from the original time. After the second dose, make sure you don’t take one until the pain becomes a 7.” Etc.
The moment to stop taking them altogether is when you first have this thought: “my pain is at a 0 right now, but I ‘know’ it’s going to get worse in a little while so I’ll just take a pill now” That is the addiction talking and BOOM I don’t take the pill and then you are done, no problems. You must avoid that “take one now for later.” If you can’t do it, you must have a friend or loved one distribute your pills.
Doesn’t matter. Small drug labs in China are cranking out Fentanyl, and importantly many *analogs* (similar in action but not chemically identical) of Fentanyl. It is cheap as dirt to manufacture, and because only a tiny amount is used, it is remarkably easy to smuggle.
And now there is a new drug that is ridiculously more powerful than heroin. Some estimates are as much as 10,000x more powerful. It is literally an elephant tranquilizer, called Carfentanil (W18 or Wildnil). And mere micrograms (1/1,000,000 of a gram) of it are all that is needed, as with LSD.
Again, think micrograms, when you hear that Canadian customs just confiscated a container of it. A four kilogram (8.8 pound) container full. Just 1 microgram, or even less, is needed for a human, so this container had 1 billion doses.
So how does controlling the US pharma industry have anything to do with this at all?
The bottom line is that Fentanyl, taken intentionally or not (used to adulterate heroin), is so risky that it is suicidal. And NOBODY can stop it, or even slow it down.
A lot of Americans who use heroin are going to die. Many already are.
I take Percocet 10s daily
Zanaflex on occasion
Prednisone on occasion
Cortisone shots on occasion
Toradal shots on occasion
All comes from a rigidly controlled pain clinic
Monthly visits and forms
Drug tests each quarter for marijuana cocaine and benzos and meth
And you are forbidden from accepting competing pain meds from another doc unless in the hospital
You are on a database in the state of TN both the pharmacies and doctors participate in
If you get dropped for a violation you will not be able to get on another pain management program unless hospice or the methadone line in the hood
Why the rise in pain med use?
We have a sharply aging population due to the boomers and will again in 25 years or so when their kids age
Think of it as the big boom 1946-65 followed by yet another lesser but still significant bubble in the 80s of births and now with the immigrant bubble who knows
When I go for my monthly visit the patient ages in the waiting room are rarely under 55 unless injured
They sniff out the resellers pretty quick though I’m sure some get through
Around here with our big Mexican population young opiate abusers have learned heroin is cheap and available but they are sometimes stupid with the dose sadly
My doctor will not prescribe OxyContin or Xanax
There is a sign out front
Typical therapeutic pain mgt us 10-40mg of oxycodone or hydrocodone daily
Abusers I’ve known start their morning with 40-60mg and proceed to gobble 150-200 mg daily which is never ending chase the buzz
It’s no wonder they move on to dilaudid or fentanyl and then ultimately heroin bought on the street
If you find a serious Mexican dealer who likely doesn’t adulterate a fairly inexpensive product an opiate abuser can accommodate their addiction easily for 20-40 bucks a day
In other words a little more than Starbucks and two packs of Reds
From what I’m told the Mex dope is very very good
Which sadly explains why folks are dying from it
People do crazy things
Chewing fentanyl patches is probably the nuttiest I’ve heard
My little brother got fentanyl patches. 10mg I think after a snowmobile wreck
He put one on and waited
He said after about an hour nothing so he put on another one
He called me vomiting thinking he was going to die and yanked them both off...,he said for about 15 minutes it was cold sweat and nausea and spinning
Strong stuff that’s why they put it in epidurals at childbirth and the drip when you have an arteriogram