Editorial: Plague of opioids

The Boston Herald ^ | 03-20-18 | Tom Shattuck

[papertyger]

Not quite sure what you’re trying to say, but I will clarify that morphine doesn’t work on me. I’ve always had some combination of oxy/hydro prescribed for pain.

[NobleFree]

You can't conclude from one data point (China) what is the "natural progression" - and the available evidence from the USA when opiates were legal indicates the opposite.

You are going to ignore the millions of people involved, and the nearly Century under which they suffered from drugs imported into their country, and call it "ONE DATA POINT" ?

Those centuries and millions were part of ONE progression - ergo, one data point.

And then you are going to use the pathetically small sample of drug users in the early history of the US as evidence that drugs were not a problem?

Oh, the sample was small? What was its size?

We were on the early phase of that drug addiction curve when officials took steps to ban them.

Nonsense - opiate addiction peaked in the 1890s, decades before the Harrison Narcotics Act.

[Hawthorn]

>> How about we figure out where the drugs are hitting the open market? <<

I think the big problem is not prescription pills, but rather things like illegal fenatyl — which I understand is fairly easy to make, either in a USA lab or oversease.

>> As I said above, the Urgent Care docs were pretty quick to try to force me a script when I had a thumb issue. However, I doubt that one bottle of pills was going to lead me to herion. <<

Then you fall into the 98% of prescription users who don’t develop an addiction.

And ditto for my wife, who took opioids for more than a year, before she finally had a successful surgery to cure her pain. As soon as the pain was gone, she was able to stop the pills immediately. Not a hint of an addiction.

>> But local cops are finding people with MASSIVE amounts of Oxy, legally made, that they got from somewhere. Most don’t have a script <<

How do they know it’s legally made? Might be very cleverly counterfeited stuff.

>> There are a lot of people selling their pills second hand <<

I really doubt that those resold pills are gonna kill a lot of people, unless the users overdose on purpose, and/or unless they mix them with things like alcohol or fenatyl.

[DiogenesLamp]

Those centuries and millions were part of ONE progression - ergo, one data point.

Nope. Not going to argue with you.

[NobleFree]

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[Lumper20]

Hope you are pain free now.