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Falling out: the opioid epidemic (or, fighting the war on the war on drugs)


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48 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

 

 

48 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Silk Road (2.0, 3.0 etc) and several online sellers have become a huge (multibillion$) black market that has indeed been undercutting big Pharma on prescription prices. This is already happening now. Its just not happening on the scale that we would see with legalized drugs.

It's my understanding that the only thing darknet undercuts is illegal street dealers. And that prescription meds are far from the big money makers. I'd be interested to know where they are getting billions of dollars worth of prescription drug merchandise if not stolen from Pharm companies themselves.

It gets confusing there because you are dealing with different countries and different laws and different regulations on Pharm companies and medical professionals .

Still it isn't exactly a guy on the street, and im assuming it has to cut down on the violence of face to face drug deals and physical territory disputes. 

Whether people are still committing crimes to buy drugs in the mail at the same rate idk, seems like it would be less since you aren't getting a fix automatically like you would in a face to face deal.

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12 hours ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

I think you are right... And there are many other factors that negatively affect an users quality of life far more than the simple cost of scoring effective dosage (heroin, for example is rather cheap; I likely spend more money on beer and cigarettes a day than the average heroin user spends to get high in my area)

Lobster, congrats to your friend.  Waiting for "the call" is hell, you and the Mrs. have my deepest sympathies. 

Here an opiate addict will spend $40-$120 / day just to keep from getting sick.  That adds up to a lot of cigarettes.

12 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

But where is the street level dealer going to get his heroin to sell in a scenario where you go get it with a perscription?

He will either have to convince a doctor to prescribe it to him or find some way to continually steal mass quantities of it from somewhere.

In a state where there are more opiate prescriptions floating around than people, I'd guess they'd get it from a doctor.

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There is no separating the for-profit prison industry from the unmitigated disaster that is the War on Drugs.
Incarceration is an example of a service that, when privatized, suffers gravely from moral hazards, perverse incentives, and regulatory capture. It should surprise no one that prison industry profit and socially optimal outcomes are antithetical. Prisons, like health insurance, are just one of those things that shouldn't be privatized.
But free markets are no more to blame for the appalling facts of incarceration in the United States than wild dogs can be blamed for biting people. We know full well that both require discipline and regulation in order to make a welcome contribution to society.
No, it is the War on Drugs that is really to blame. What began as a hopelessly misguided puritanical effort to criminalize sin has spun so far out of control that it has mutated into perhaps the darkest chapter of social injustice and moral depravity this country has witnessed since the abolition of slavery.
Tens of millions of lives have been ruined, countless families and neighborhoods and communities have been torn asunder, and trillions of dollars of economic productivity have been lost. And for all this, drug use has apparently climbed if anything, while overall crime appears to be unaffected by prohibition. The War on Drugs is an abject failure by almost every conceivable measure. These points alone would be damnation enough, but the fact that a multi-billion-dollar profiteering complex has arisen on the back of this failure adds insult to injury.
Thankfully there appears to finally be some light at the end of the tunnel, with swelling support nationwide for the legalization of marijuana. We will surely look back on the prohibition of marijuana and wonder what on Earth our parents and grandparents were thinking when they condemned millions of their countrymen to years behind bars for something less harmful than ordering a bottle of wine with dinner.

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The argument that there would be an increase in addicts presupposes theres large amounts of people out there now who want to be be addicted but cant get there hands on oopiates? Its just as likely that as future generations see the horrors of addiction that they would shun the choice of harming themselves that way. Theres nothing preventing people from consuming all types of poisons widely available (except self preservation) and we dont have the widespread problem of prostitution and theft for legal and easy to aquire items, at least not on any level like you see with narcotics.

No, the argument is that if you make it widely available people can and will try it recreationally, and unlike most other drugs it is very much more likely they will become physiologically addicted to it.

And we have evidence of this - namely, in China in the 19th century, where  the use of opium was equivalent to the entire worldwide current production today. There are reports that 9 in 10 people were addicted in certain provinces, and it became a massive cultural issue to the point where they had no choice but to ban it. 

Again, the problem is that all manner of legal poisons are not as addictive as opiates are, and the behavior of many opiate addicts is essentially senescence. 

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21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, the argument is that if you make it widely available people can and will try it recreationally, and unlike most other drugs it is very much more likely they will become physiologically addicted to it.

And we have evidence of this - namely, in China in the 19th century, where  the use of opium was equivalent to the entire worldwide current production today. There are reports that 9 in 10 people were addicted in certain provinces, and it became a massive cultural issue to the point where they had no choice but to ban it. 

Again, the problem is that all manner of legal poisons are not as addictive as opiates are, and the behavior of many opiate addicts is essentially senescence. 

Yeah, the thing is, you can just buy a bunch of Hershey bars or weed and consume them all and then not have one for awhile.  And you are fine.  But with opiods and even cocaine, many people will be hooked to the point that they are doing things they never thought theyd do just get another scrape.  And opiods especially have a capacity to kill the user.  It'd be like if Chubby Hubby or New York Super Fudge Chunk had a ten percent mortality rate over weekly users each year, with an increase in mortality rate after that based on time of consumption (statistic made up bit I think close enough).

And to whomever didn't get the economics of opioid use.... I used to buy heroin because it was cheap and usually had fewer side effects than the pills I could get. A lot of pills have acetaminophen in them, which if your a drinker as well is just a liver death sentence.  I would pretty much just go with the heroin unless I could get acetaminophen free pills.  It was way cheaper ($80 would last me a week or more).   This was 2006,7,8, and was black tar anyway so there wasn't much worry about fentanyl or other variants.  

There is certainly some kind of black market / grey market now however where the supply is coming in stolen truckloads or stuff that employees at big pharmaceutical  companies or the corporations themselves are complicit in.  As scary as the over prescription issue is ( and it is likely tied in in some way, with duplicate and fake prescriptions rampant), the fact remains that there is a supply out there for people without a prescription.  The drug companies have to be complicit in this in some way.  And despite the suffering and the death at their hands, I'm sure no criminal charges will happen if they are caught.  A fine, I guess. 

I don't know what the answer is.  I'd just urge anyone out there involved in anyway to look into some of the resources RRL and Lily linked or their counterpart in your state.  It's a shitty mountain to climb, because even if your addicted loved one wants help, it's not always available.  

 

Just kind of rantingand raw but seriously, decriminalize this shit and spend even half the fucking money in treatment options.

Eta:. Kal, sorry I quoted your post but was riffing off the last couple pages.  Anybody feel free to pm me for whatever, promise I won't send unsolicited dick pics.

 

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18 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

 

Eta:. Kal, sorry I quoted your post but was riffing off the last couple pages.  Anybody feel free to pm me for whatever, promise I won't send unsolicited dick pics.

 

OH GREAT WE HAVE TO SOLICIT THEM NOW

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At this point any reasonable person should realize the war on drugs has always had very little to do with legitimate safety but more about threats to industries and racism. 

For example, Why did USA decide to call it marijuana instead of a proper English name???

I just don't see this sky is falling scenario where everybody decides to party with painkillers in this day and age where there's so much more awareness and information. Im assuming there would be an increase in overall usage for a period of time at least but even that would be better than all the extra problems to society you create when you continue to miserably fail in handcuffing and jailing the drugs out of  people over and over and over and over again. Cigarettes, which have been claimed to be as addictive as anything else out there are on the decline not because Johnny Law busted down doors with guns drawn rootin tootin style. 

 

Legalizing doesn't equal endorsing.

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3 minutes ago, The Lone Rider said:

^^ This. Didn't some Nixon aide admit there was more focus on the hippies and African-Americans during crackdowns because they were political dissidents ?

It goes back even further. 

J Edgar Hoovers FBI strategy against Malcolm X, MLK, and the civil rights movement.

Goes back even further than that with the opium smoking Chinese immigrants.

Also there's the great hemp vs papermills conspiracy

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2 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

It goes back even further. 

J Edgar Hoovers FBI strategy against Malcolm X, MLK, and the civil rights movement.

Goes back even further than that with the opium smoking Chinese immigrants.

Also there's the great hemp vs papermills conspiracy

Suddenly the "Lock 'em up !"  'solution' makes sense. When people talk about institutional racism this is what they mean

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8 hours ago, Lily Valley said:

Lobster, congrats to your friend.  Waiting for "the call" is hell, you and the Mrs. have my deepest sympathies. 

Here an opiate addict will spend $40-$120 / day just to keep from getting sick.  That adds up to a lot of cigarettes.

In a state where there are more opiate prescriptions floating around than people, I'd guess they'd get it from a doctor.

Yeah, fair. I was indulging in a bit of hyperbole. I think in some way my tiny crustacean excuse for a brain I meant to highlight the horrible feedback loop of feeding an addiction and the decreasing lack of means to do so

And on the subject of "where are these pills coming from?" This is a very enlightening article

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/25/opioid-epidemic-prescription-painkillers-heroin-addiction

the section of the "pill mills" especially

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  • 3 weeks later...

Kratom set to be Schedule I  as of today, although there is talk of a postponement.  talk of a postponement.

 

really hope this doesn't happen without research.  If anything kratom seems to be a course of treatment for opioid addictions, and it's about to become criminalized.  It just seems like this decision will result in nothing but pointless jail sentences, wasted taxpayer dollars, and a lot of suffering.

Sounds paranoid but it's difficult for me to see this without suspecting the machinations of Big Pharma being instrumental in this decision.

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