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Comment by woliveirajr | Hacker News Reader

Having gone some surgery few months ago where a miscommunication (let's name it this way) from the nurses about my prescription left one day longer in the hospital, made my cry out of pain and made me afraid of even trying to stand up, I must say that I never understood the idea that "let's refrain giving so much opiates to these patients who have a life-expectancy of few months because it might get then addicted".

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I didn't realise this was actually a thing? There's so much craziness out there that I guess it probably is.

However, don't get it confused with over-prescribing opiates to people with chronic but not life-ending pain, then suddenly restricting them again, which many point to as creating a ready market for illegal drugs.

Ideally they'd get less dangerous pain medication, and/or in a controlled manner that prevent accidental or intentional abuse, resale etc.

That's some interesting discussion. Not all drugs act the same on everybody, sometimes a stronger drug won't have any effect while a lighter one (or just slightly different one) might be enough. But there are cases that the lighter one can be eaten like cereals in the morning and won't give you any comfort.

Side effects are also a thing. Sometimes the lighter medication gives you the worst side effects, and I don't think (at least not anymore after my ordeal) that's human not to try and give all possibilities to your patient.

Of course abuse must be considered, resale should be prevented. Some drugs even have a special coating to prevent chewing and breaking so that the extended release drug isn't delivered to your body in some abusive way.

But preventing real, needed patients from getting a good drug because someone else might abuse it isn't fair for those who need.

> of few months because it might get then addicted

And thanks to Church, some would say "because it is a sin".

Peddle your propaganda elsewehere.

But that's one of the main driving forces of puritanism, which is what the war on drugs is mostly about.

To the contrary, to quote Nixon's aide (Nixon having started the war on drugs):

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_us...]

And that caused black religious communities to join the war as they didn't want to be associated with drugs:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19860723&id=...

"Just as in the past we fought slavery and we fought racism, we are going to fight drugs and the total indifference of those in power"

Actually, the RCC's position would probably be something akin to "feeling pain brings us closer to being like Jesus" or some other such nonsense.

I mean, after all, that was Mother Theresa's outlook (which is why so many suffered under her "care" in terrible conditions - despite her organization being extremely well funded. Mind you, though, that when it came time for her care, flying out to receive proper medical treatment in a first-world country was paramount).

Actually, Pope Francis just organized a workshop to try to address the issue.

http://www.catholicregister.org/faith/item/23678-drugs-a-new...

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