/Sadly one must ask 'how dysfunctional is the U.S.'? Not necessarily in the arena of kidnappings but overall with gangs in cities, riots, looting, etc. And, we must remember who takes the drugs and who 'hooks' them on the drugs by prescribing them.
It’s interesting when you trace the chain of opioid supply back to the early-mid 2000’s where the opioid problem was largely fueled by the unnecessarily overprescribing of OxyContin. By roughly 2010-2011, doctors began to wise up to the fact that they had hooked America on opioid pills and just as soon as this doctor-patient/dealer-user relationship began to sever, the demand was met with a new supply of illegal pill mills opening up everywhere like an OxyContin gold rush. By roughly 2013-2014, when the federal government began to wise up to the opioid crisis spread throughout every city and state across the country, the pill mills dried up and conveniently, for the demand side of the equation, heroin filled the supply gap almost overnight—Mexican black tar for the west coast and an even stronger Afghan grey powder for just about everywhere east of El Paso, Texas. When the crisis became an epidemic by roughly 2016, fentanyl overtook the heroin trade and the numbers of overdose deaths in America skyrocketed exponentially almost overnight from 25,000 to over 100,000 Americans dying every year from 2017-present. I don’t know how to solve this problem but I know if it were Anthrax or Bubonic Plague killing nearly 130,000 Americans every 12 months since 2020, SOMETHING would be done about it.
Meanwhile, general practitioners take no blame for their part in creating the crisis and blame the Pharma companies that lied about addiction. Yet, one of the primary jobs of a GP is managing a patient's prescriptions. If they didn't know people were getting addicted, they are idiots (or just way overworked). Meanwhile again, there are addicts created by the medical system and legitimate chronic pain patients who can't get a prescription for the only thing that might help them. So, they go to the streets. And often die. An interesting note is that you could buy opiates over the counter until the 1990s when the Pharma companies got them banned. It got watered down a bit by then and finally you had to sign for it and be 18 or 21, but it was still over the counter. My parents had the original paregoric in their medical kit and I used the watered down version with my own kids. I really feel sorry for kids today who might have a horrible earache or stomach ache. That stuff was magic, it was used very rarely, and I don't remember anyone abusing it. Maybe a few. What is this, the War on Drugs 3.0 or something? Another war that doesn't work. It is the US government responsible for the overdoses.
/Sadly one must ask 'how dysfunctional is the U.S.'? Not necessarily in the arena of kidnappings but overall with gangs in cities, riots, looting, etc. And, we must remember who takes the drugs and who 'hooks' them on the drugs by prescribing them.
It’s interesting when you trace the chain of opioid supply back to the early-mid 2000’s where the opioid problem was largely fueled by the unnecessarily overprescribing of OxyContin. By roughly 2010-2011, doctors began to wise up to the fact that they had hooked America on opioid pills and just as soon as this doctor-patient/dealer-user relationship began to sever, the demand was met with a new supply of illegal pill mills opening up everywhere like an OxyContin gold rush. By roughly 2013-2014, when the federal government began to wise up to the opioid crisis spread throughout every city and state across the country, the pill mills dried up and conveniently, for the demand side of the equation, heroin filled the supply gap almost overnight—Mexican black tar for the west coast and an even stronger Afghan grey powder for just about everywhere east of El Paso, Texas. When the crisis became an epidemic by roughly 2016, fentanyl overtook the heroin trade and the numbers of overdose deaths in America skyrocketed exponentially almost overnight from 25,000 to over 100,000 Americans dying every year from 2017-present. I don’t know how to solve this problem but I know if it were Anthrax or Bubonic Plague killing nearly 130,000 Americans every 12 months since 2020, SOMETHING would be done about it.
Meanwhile, general practitioners take no blame for their part in creating the crisis and blame the Pharma companies that lied about addiction. Yet, one of the primary jobs of a GP is managing a patient's prescriptions. If they didn't know people were getting addicted, they are idiots (or just way overworked). Meanwhile again, there are addicts created by the medical system and legitimate chronic pain patients who can't get a prescription for the only thing that might help them. So, they go to the streets. And often die. An interesting note is that you could buy opiates over the counter until the 1990s when the Pharma companies got them banned. It got watered down a bit by then and finally you had to sign for it and be 18 or 21, but it was still over the counter. My parents had the original paregoric in their medical kit and I used the watered down version with my own kids. I really feel sorry for kids today who might have a horrible earache or stomach ache. That stuff was magic, it was used very rarely, and I don't remember anyone abusing it. Maybe a few. What is this, the War on Drugs 3.0 or something? Another war that doesn't work. It is the US government responsible for the overdoses.