I mean I read your response and think, "wow, that's horrible." Then realize absolutely nothing is going to be done about it.
So far it has been 241 years.
My mother broke her wrist 6 months ago, and was given opiates to deal with the pain of having a plate put in her wrist. She did not become an opiate addict. I presume she managed to avoid becoming a junky because she has a pretty stable day-to-day life.
> I presume she managed to avoid becoming a junky because she has a pretty stable day-to-day life.
While circumstance and upbringing are factors for addition, I think it's accepted that there is also a biological component; your mom may be inherently less prone to becoming addicted to opiates.
The Mafia and other manifestations of "traditional" organized crime is exactly what I was referring to.
Two years ago, when a new friend was teaching me about her addictions, I bought Johann Hari's book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs [2]. Hari says that after heroin was made very difficult to obtain (circa 1915), organized crime became the supplier for most addicts.
The Los Angeles Times Op-Ed A 1930s California story shows why the war on drugs is a failure also covers how the Mafia swooped in to supply the needs of addicts [2]. This is the primary article I was thinking of when I wrote the quip you responded to.
[1] http://chasingthescream.com/
[2] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hari-california-d...
> > I presume she managed to avoid becoming a junky because she has a pretty stable day-to-day life.
> While circumstance and upbringing are factors for addition, I think it's accepted that there is also a biological component; your mom may be inherently less prone to becoming addicted to opiates.
My mother is inherently less prone to becoming an addict because she has meaningful things to do: job, family, friends, trips, etc. My friend who taught me about addictions (mentioned above) was vulnerable to the street pharmacy because she was exposed to meth amphetamine as a pre-teen, and her brain chemistry never fully recovered. She says she was very depressed as a child/teen, and was made suicidal by her doctor when he injected her with Depo-Provera around age 20 (this is a chemical castration drug used for 3 months of "birth control"). This friend is doing well now because I provided the "connection" that Johann Hari says is so important for helping addicts out of their pit.
Having meaningful things to do is not "inherent."
I never heard of Depo-Provera before but calling it "chemical castration" and putting "birth control" in scare quotes seems like hyperbole and inflammatory. The drug is a progestin, a synthetic hormone that is administered in a number of forms. Depression is one of the possible side effects of the shot, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would exacerbate an existing condition and you've not mentioned whether the doctor was also treating her depression.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-...
The intention is to point out the absurdity of our situation, where much-desired plant-based substances can only be obtained with the assistance of organized crime.
> It's also rather beside the point when talking about today's epidemic.
The point is that the epidemic is entirely artificial. It is created and maintained by stupid politicians. It could be ended in a few months by implementing the same solution as is used in Switzerland.
> I never heard of Depo-Provera before but calling it "chemical castration" and putting "birth control" in scare quotes seems like hyperbole and inflammatory.
The same drug is given to male sex offenders [1] explicitly for the purpose of chemical castration. Many women lose their libido when they're put on this drug. No hyperbole is enough to warn about the dangers of this FDA-approved substance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medroxyprogesterone_acetate#Ot...
But synthetic vs. plant-based doesn't mean shit, plenty of plants can kill you. I'm all for treatment over criminalization but you sound more like you're advocating for legalization of heroin.
> No hyperbole is enough to warn about the dangers of this FDA-approved substance.
Sure, if you're willing to ignore all the other information on that Wikipedia page. Every patient should be well-informed about possible side effects before starting a medication. The injection form is longer lasting so it may take longer for bad effects to subside but loss of libido for a few months is not the end of the world.
The worst thing about chemical castration of sex offenders is it's forced.
My friend did not transfer her addiction from pills, she was a good old-fashioned heroin addict. The present body count stems from the synthetics. Many fewer people died when the street pharmacy's products were purer.
> I'm all for treatment over criminalization but you sound more like you're advocating for legalization of heroin.
I don't think legalization is necessary, just an acknowledgement that present policy is actually a make-work program for organized crime.
As for your comments about Provera, I say that doctors should not play Russian Roulette with women's health.
"Heroin-related deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2015, with 12,989 heroin deaths in 2015. The largest increase in overdose deaths from 2014 to 2015 was for those involving synthetic opioids (other than methadone), which rose from 5,544 deaths in 2014 to 9,580 deaths in 2015. One of these synthetic opioids, illegally-made fentanyl, drove the increase. It was often mixed with heroin and/or cocaine as a combination product—with or without the user’s knowledge." [0]
But the rate of increase for death by prescription opioid has been greater than non-prescription so they are nearly half of all deaths.
This is almost always linked to developmental and shock trauma earlier in life.
I wish the justice system would consider this factor when deciding whether to send people for gratuitous punishment...
Where would we be if they hadn't circumvented the constitution and just let people use the drugs they wanted? We would probably (maybe) have more drug deaths, but we wouldn't have this 1984 like society. I think I want a do-over.
I realized I was being vague.
But they are arbitrary. The talk radio in the rural conservative parts and the Internet circlejerks in the liberal ones have divided peoples way worse than they were a hundred years ago by putting the soft-reds and soft-blues into echo chambers of the most ardent idealogues and turning many into adherents that place their personal identity into their politics.
The other problem is those of us guilty of that - the framing of our identity on high-brow concepts like ideology - don't want to change. Who wants to revert back to ignorance on how you personally think the world is best ordered?
The rift will only grow until dissolution does happen unless all participants admit that they want to preserve solidarity in society. They will not be able to change themselves, but they can train future generations to not base themselves so heavily in politics such that they do not segregate themselves such. But it would take everyone agreeing on something nobody wants to have happen. So... yeah right.