Rob Rogers for October 19, 2017

Been going on for a long time. Also long time they’ve been manufacturing many times the amount of narcotics legally prescribed, and gee, they just happen to end up on the black market and coming into the country to dealers. Now how could that happen???

First End the drug war totally and lets get back to reality here. Now how are the big Pharma beating the DEA? Why are former members of the DEA working for the same pharmaceuticals they were supposedly fighting?

When drug addiction was an inner city problem, the solution was tougher law enforcement. Lock ’em up and throw away the key. Then white people started dying. Oh my god! National emergency!

What’s the big deal?

Free market capitalism. Supply and demand. Freedom! Personal responsibility.

Once those pharma multinational corporations make enough money and get enough tax cuts, they’re going to invest in TONS of jobs.

Will there be anyone left with enough intelligence to hold a job?

Artificial Intelligence is big in D.C.

Who sent the representatives to DC that betrayed their constituents and favored big pharma?

Who picks the candidates -- the ones who get get along so well with big pharma -- for the political parties?

Is capitalism not longer compatible with a democratic-republican government?

But…But…But…PROFITS!!

450,000 people die annually from tobacco related causes.

A mere 55,000 from Opioid addiction?

Seems like DEA is targeting the wrong thing.

How do you force people to stop taking pills ? Prohibition does not work. We need a propaganda campaign to demonize pill use.

But last year’s profits looked GREAT! You got a problem with a company making a profit? You must be one o’ them Marxists, I bet.

I can never get a pain pill from a doctor. Maybe I should move to South Carolina. Didn’t those people vote for Trump? Its all beginning to make sense now.

“In 2015, health care providers wrote enough opioid prescriptions to medicate every American around the clock for three weeks, and on the average day, more than 650,000 opioids prescriptions are dispensed in the U.S.,” wrote the Attorney General’s Office. “In South Carolina, for each year from 2012 through 2016, there has been more than one opioid prescription for every resident in the state. In 2016, South Carolina ranked ninth in the nation in opioid prescribing rates.”

https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2017/09/19/sc-attorney-general-joins-40-other-states-in-demanding-evidence-from-opioid-distributors

Good discussion andcomments. I wonder how many readers remember the original photo this comic was drawn in reference to?

It is a little too soon after this tragedy to talk about Drug controls, Big Pharma gives its thoughts and prayers to victims, while they try and pass a new silencer law. (They are tying to halt transparency laws, so far the Federal courts have rejected their request)

The GOP is gutting health care and expecting first class medicine? Meanwhile Congressmen make money doing Big pharma lap dances.

I’ve got a little short list of pain related medical conditions myself. And I was on a pain relief maintenance program. It worked wonderfully. I was not addicted. I did not abuse it. It was low dose. It was regulated. And I felt like a human being who could function normally. But at the beginning of this year when Trump took office my doctor said …Hey look… I have to take you off of this system because in a few months you won’t be able to acquire the medications that you need for this system. I can write the prescriptions but the pharmacies won’t have the medications that you need because this Administration is going to shut them down…. So my successful pain management system was stopped and there was not another pain management system to replace it…. So here I am ..basically I’m chained to a chair.. I do have some good days when I can get around enough to do my chores….. When I can get out to the grocery store. But most days I either have to stay sat down in my chair or lay down on the couch. And that does not alleviate any of the pain. Are we tired of living in pain??? Probably. Most definitely…..But the human will to survive.. to hang in there… You just keep carrying on ….for as long as you can. …I’ve heard that there are pain relief systems that do not require opioids…. If there really are any such treatments, my insurance doesn’t cover them.

While big pharma has some responsibility here, the majority of opiod related OD’s are coming from fentanyl and/or heroin.

That’s a problem. I remember that whole era WAY too clearly, and too often. I lost 2 of my best friends and a bunch of good guys I served with. Night terror, sweats and loss of sleep, AND a long line of surgeries. Ya, I remember that “dirty little war” like it was yesterday. I used to go in my dark place for years with drugs and alcohol. It was my only escape. To this day I have been unable to forget the images. Therapy has helped me be less angry but I can’t forget . . .and never will.

https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/29/health/gupta-unintended-consequences/index.html

(2014)

Today’s typical heroin addict starts using at 23, is more likely to live in the affluent suburbs and was likely unwittingly led to heroin through painkillers prescribed by his or her doctor.

While heroin is illicit and opioid pills such as oxycontin are FDA-approved, each is derived from the poppy plant. Their chemical structures are highly similar and they bind to the same group of receptors in the brain. (A few opioids, like fentanyl, are totally synthetic but designed to bind with those same receptors).

In any case, the various drugs produce the same result: an increase in pain tolerance and a sense of euphoria, along with drowsiness, occasional nausea and, at higher doses, a slowing of the user’s breathing.

All these drugs trigger “tolerance” — the need to take higher doses for the same effect — and a craving for the drug in its absence.

It is precisely because there are so many similarities that pain pill addicts frequently turn to heroin when pills are no longer available to them.

Heroin is usually cheaper than prescription drugs. Opiate pain medications cost the uninsured about $1 per milligram; so a 60-milligram pill will cost $60. You can obtain the equivalent amount of heroin for about one-tenth the price.

My house (before I lost it in a HARP debacle) was burglarized more than half a dozen times by a drug addict who kept coming back because he felt that a “legally-blind” old man was an easy target. I also lost two bikes and some bike parts because of some of these opportunists. At this point, if the drug addicts OD, then I say GOOD RIDDANCE!

Unfortunately the poppy plant was just the start as chemists made it more an more potent. Then people started to get addicted to it, spend all their time with it. Still if they want off of it or stay on it is their business.