The Parallels Between the Gun Debate and the Opioid Crisis

The Daily Signal ^ | March 7, 2018 | Star Parker

[Noamie]

Sharing medication with friends or family members isn’t what started this problem, nor is it why it continues.

Medicine cabinets containing pain medications have been around for decades. So, ask yourself, why now?

[nitzy]

Lets say a bullet manufacturer designed a bullet and markets it as being far more likely to kill good guys than bad guys. Then let’s say the government says “Great, we will give your company 1 billion tax dollars to distribute these bullets to our citizens”. And then lets say it turns out that after these bullets are fired and hit a bad guy, they shoot straight up into the air only to come down an hour or two later and kill the shooter...

I would say it was entirely appropriate to look into not only the sale of these bullets but especially the government endorsement and funding of these bullets.

[nitzy]

***Whoops....I meant more bad guys than good guys.

[Noamie]

“Bottom line, heroin has been around for a long, long time and never got to epidemic status until after a 20 year flood of “safe” and legal Oxycontin into our communities.”

---

I gave you the average victim. That was all.

However, your note over-simplifies a serious problem and it is unfortunately untrue. I encourage reading up on heroin use and its history in the U.S. as well as the current issues with fentanyl/car-fentanyl importation and smuggling, and also refer to what, specifically, is killing people and why heroin and fentanyl use has paralleled the rising death rate.

People who tell you that they are spike junkies because a Dr prescribed them pain killers and that led to china/fentanyl use are lying.

Apologies, but Oxy? That hasn’t been a mainstream problem since the early 2000’s? You need to look into snorting Neurontin, Hydros, Roxys, etc and get caught up on the current Rx meds.

My bottom line is that the public is being misled by the same liberal media they distrust on every other issue so that the public will blame Doctors and Pharm companies for a reason created by liberalism itself. It is a blame deflection issue.

Respectfully.

[NobleFree]

If you're talking about the apparently misrepresented addictiveness of the new opioids:

• That's a different issue than the funding by government and influence on government you were previously discussing.
• Your analogy doesn't apply - from the article: 'data show “that only a minority of people who are prescribed opioids for pain become addicted to them'.

[nitzy]

People who tell you that they are spike junkies because a Dr prescribed them pain killers and that led to china/fentanyl use are lying.

It indisputable that tons and tons of kids are starting out their opiate addiction by taking pills. I have a high schooler who confirms pill use at his school is wide spread. Whether these pills came from a personal prescription or they came from a town in West Virginia with a population of 3000 where 2,000,000 pills are shipped in each year, I don't know. My bottom line is that these things are dangerous. There are doctors who are willing to write dirty scripts and the drug companies are more than willing to ship as much of their poison as someone will pay for. And the worst part is that we are all funding it.