Posted on 03/08/2018 7:47:53 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
By now, most have heard about the deadly opioid epidemic that has struck our nation.
According to data compiled in a Kaiser Family Foundation report, there were 42,249 casualties in 2016 related to opioids. This is double the 21,089 reported in 2010.
For a little perspective, given all the attention guns are getting these days, per the FBI, in 2015 there were 13,455 murders, 9,616 committed with firearms.
What is driving this opioid crisis?
According to a recent report about opioids by the Social Capital Project, organized in the U.S. Senate, “the oversupply and abuse of legal prescription pain relievers is at the heart of the crisis.”
This has led to action in Washington with legislation such as the Opioid Addiction Prevention Act, which would impose limits on opioid painkiller prescriptions.
However, Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., challenges this picture, which she calls “a false narrative.”
According to Satel, data show “that only a minority of people who are prescribed opioids for pain become addicted to them, and those who do become addicted and who die from painkiller overdoses tend to obtain these medications from sources other than their own physicians.
Within the past several years, overdose deaths are overwhelmingly attributable not to prescription opioids but to illicit fentanyl and heroin. These ‘street opioids’ have become the engine of the opioid crisis in its current, and most lethal form.”
Satel acknowledges the problem of overprescribed opioid painkillers being diverted to people other than the intended patient, but she doesn’t see this as the core of today’s crisis.
Furthermore, we don’t want to get into a situation where doctors are intimidated from prescribing, or prevented from prescribing, painkillers that are justifiably needed.
I believe Satel zeroes in on the real heart of the crisis when she says, “What we need is demand-side policy. Interventions that seek to reduce the desire to use drugs, be they painkillers, or illicit opioids.”
Here, I see an interesting parallel to the gun debate.
That is, the center of the deadly problem is with the disturbed user or perpetrator, rather than with the instrument—whether it is a gun or a drug. The instrument is the result rather than the cause.
The first impulse, particularly in a highly materialistic and secular culture like ours, is to see the problem in the thing rather than the person, because that’s the easiest approach.
Looking at the demographics of the opioid crisis, a number of flashing lights emerge.
First, the perpetrators are disproportionately men (another parallel with the gun issue). Of the 42,249 opioid-related deaths in 2016, 67 percent were men.
Also, as reported by the Social Capital Project, opioid casualties are disproportionately not married. In 2015, “never married and divorced individuals made up about 32 percent of the population but accounted for 71 percent of all opioid overdose deaths.”
And opioid casualties appear disproportionately among the least educated. In 2015, “40 percent had no more than a high school diploma or equivalent, but they accounted for 68 percent of all opioid overdose deaths.”
As policymakers in Washington and in state and local governments attempt to address this opioid crisis, looking to the usual policy tools like government programs and government spending, I think it’s worth considering that what we’re seeing may reflect a spiritual, cultural crisis.
There’s a price to be paid when a society forsakes the spiritual for the purely material and when traditional institutions such as marriage and family are abandoned. It could be that as family and marriage break down, the first victims of this abandonment of spirit and tradition are our young men.
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“Opiates don’t kill people. Doctors do.” /S
A good buzz, being necessary for deep mellowness, the right of the people to score righteous opioids, shall not be infringed.
“The first impulse...”
The only valid first impulse on a site called Free Republic is to point out that, regardless the stats involved, neither drugs nor guns are something the feds should be funding or controlling.
Other than as it pertains to controlling what crosses national borders.
Street opioids are illegal (banned) and it hasn’t stopped them from being available. What you have are drug cartels, and dealers - black market. Ban guns, and you will get the same result, gun availability via a black market run by very bad people.
So when you boil the numbers it is: young men (20’s) who did not complete highschool, who are largely unemployed or in non-career jobs, without health insurance, and who do not go to nor have a primary doctor, and who purchase the opiates (which are heroin/fentanyl) from street dealers.
And this is doctor’s and drug company’s fault? Alrighty.
The parallels between extreme ice skating and russet potatoes.
Hey, I can write comparisons that make just as much sense as the thread title.
Sometimes a writer reaches so far that the point they thought to make is hidden in another time zone.
A lot of people have narcotics in their medicine cabinet. Doctors prescribe them for things as minor as sprains and strains, and if you had surgery you can get a 3-4 month supply. People then often let family members take them for pain, or they are stolen by family.
My question is how much of this is the result of Obama arming the cartels through Fast and Furious.
Treaties signed by the Senate and President complicate matters significantly.
In WI, opioid overdose deaths went up by 35% in 2016.
Meanwhile, over the past 3years, the number of opiate prescriptions went down by 20%
Let’s thank our genius politicians for great public policy. Let’s spend more money demonizing doctors and pain patients while pretending to go after drug dealers. I want to see more tv stories on heroin abuse that show file film of oxycodone pills.
It’s good public policy when people can get treated on the street by drug dealers.
“...complicate matters significantly.”
No doubt about that.
The other branch has certainly done many things to take America farther and farther from anything resembling a Free Republic as well.
That’s why I’ve virtually moved in here.
Junk. Heroin and it’s friends
Are death. Not pleasure
Let say that all the data is correct, and that the offender population is mostly unemployed, undereducated, unmarried men.
Is anyone going to blame radical feminism and its emasculation of the American guy?
no the death surge is due to Fentanyl, from China via Mexican drug cartels.
Hey, I can write comparisons that make just as much sense as the thread title.
The title is attention-grabbing, and the article is useful in pointing out thatthere were 42,249 casualties in 2016 related to opioids. This is double the 21,089 reported in 2010.that the Democrats’ beloved “gun violence” issue is only about ¼ the significance of the opioid issue. Tho if you put gun suicides in the mix the story changes noticeably and becomes, IIRC, about ½.For a little perspective, given all the attention guns are getting these days, per the FBI, in 2015 there were 13,455 murders, 9,616 committed with firearms.
Here, I see an interesting parallel to the gun debate.
That is, the center of the deadly problem is with the disturbed user or perpetrator, rather than with the instrument—whether it is a gun or a drug. The instrument is the result rather than the cause.
The first impulse, particularly in a highly materialistic and secular culture like ours, is to see the problem in the thing rather than the person, because that’s the easiest approach.
Spot on. Bans fail - for alcohol, or other drugs, or guns - in no small part because they miss the point.
Yeah, not so fast.
That maybe the largest demographic of who is dying and how they are dying but it is in no way a comprehensive categorization of who is affected.
Many affluent communities are seeing their high school and college age kids getting hooked on pain pills. Then when the pills become too expensive they switch to heroin. Then when the herion doesn’t work they switch to fentanyl. This happened in the upper middle class town where I grew up. They have had many high school kids die from heroin in the past 10 years.
There are many successful middle aged people who have never taken drugs before who get prescribed opiate pain pills for a legitimate reason, get hooked and their life is ruined.
The drug companies lied when they came out with Oxycontin. They sold it to doctors under the guise that they were less addictive.
Comparing opiates to guns is really stupid. Guns do not physically compel you to use them. Opiates do.
I think it is the doctor’s responsibility to monitor his patient’s use of prescription opiates. If they are abusing them or selling them, he should cut them off. Maybe doctors should require drug tests before prescribing opiates or getting a script refilled. If you are a confirmed illegal drug user, maybe you shouldn’t be prescribed opiates (even if you have an injury). Or maybe you should be more closely monitored to ensure you don’t get addicted.
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.
While I agree with you to an extent, there is a huge difference between opiate pills and alcohol, weed, guns and even heroin. The multi-billion dollar drug companies are funded to a large extent by medicare, medicaid, Obamacare, etc... They run the FDA and the HHS. They make the rules governing drugs while we are actually paying them billions of dollars to sell addictive poison into our communities.
The problem with Big Pharma is (1) they make a ton of money and (2) Congress and regulators can be bought and (3) Congress has made themselves and regulators worth buying. 2 is simply human nature; 1 we have to be careful about correcting lest we reduce the incentive to develop new drugs; I think the conservative answer is to attack 3.
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