Let's End the War on Drugs

Spare_change

Gold Member
Jun 27, 2011
8,690
1,293
280

Tom Frieden, M.D. is the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



One of the most heartbreaking problems I’ve faced as CDC director is our nation’s opioid crisis. Lives, families, and communities continue to be devastated by this complex and evolving epidemic.

Year after year since I’ve been at CDC, the drug overdose death toll in our nation has been the highest on record. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans lost their lives from an overdose. More than 33,000 of these deaths involved a prescription or illicit opioid.

This crisis was caused, in large part, by decades of prescribing too many opioids for too many conditions where they provide minimal benefit and is now made worse by wide availability of cheap, potent, and easily available illegal opioids: heroin, illicitly made fentanyl, and other, newer illicit synthetic opioids. These deadly drugs have found a ready market in people primed for addiction by misuse of prescription opioids.

Overdose deaths involving heroin have more than quadrupled since 2010. And what was a slow stream of illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, is now a flood, with the amount of the powerful drug seized by law enforcement increasing dramatically. America is awash in opioids; urgent action is critical.

EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end America's growing opioid epidemic
 
Until the government people responsible for making decisions start to understand the difference between a prescription for someone who needs and uses opioids appropriately, and a person who is an addict they will never make any progress.

The prescribing of pain relievers has absolutely no bearing of this problem. They talk about the number of prescriptions written, but fail to take into account that patients are forced to get prescriptions every two weeks from their doctor with no refills. So of course the number of prescriptions will be high. Currently 25-30% of people in the US are lining in chronic pain.

In Canada Naloxone is given to anyone who needs it, for FREE. That has greatly helped to reduce deaths. They also have safe sites for injecting and for getting clean needles. That has also helped, not just with deaths but reducing people getting AIDS from others needles..

The USA continues to scare the public into thinking this is a problem when in fact it is less than 0.001% of the population who have a problem.
 
Until the government people responsible for making decisions start to understand the difference between a prescription for someone who needs and uses opioids appropriately, and a person who is an addict they will never make any progress.

The prescribing of pain relievers has absolutely no bearing of this problem. They talk about the number of prescriptions written, but fail to take into account that patients are forced to get prescriptions every two weeks from their doctor with no refills. So of course the number of prescriptions will be high. Currently 25-30% of people in the US are lining in chronic pain.

In Canada Naloxone is given to anyone who needs it, for FREE. That has greatly helped to reduce deaths. They also have safe sites for injecting and for getting clean needles. That has also helped, not just with deaths but reducing people getting AIDS from others needles..

The USA continues to scare the public into thinking this is a problem when in fact it is less than 0.001% of the population who have a problem.

Give that 10 times the people died from opioid abuse than from firearm abuse, can we then apply the same logic and say that gun violence is not a problem, either?
 
Since guns are the #2 killer of children in the USA then yes, I guess that should be considered, but this conversation is about opioids ... not guns.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top