Why don't doctors simply stop prescribing these drugs?
> In the past five years, as prescriptions for opioids fell in response to the crisis, Americans didn’t shake the habit or seek rehab; they turned to heroin instead. Four out of five people in the US who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Then street heroin started being secretly cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.
I appreciate Nan Goldin as an artist but I'm not sure what she can do here, as this is more powerful than even the Sacklers at this point. In a kind of irony, her work was an inspiration for the first wave of heroin chic in the 90's.
And if you have an issue with the 12 hour dosing of Oxycontin, take it up with the FDA. They approved it.
I was very satisfied with the therapy as I had very little post-operative discomfort.
I took the medicine for several days, the prescription ran out, and I felt no incentive to request a refill nor did I turn to street drugs.
I am truly sorry for people that struggle with addiction. I have family members who struggle with that and I know the devastation that it causes.
However, I do not want the government to eliminate an effective class of medications, either through banning them or through scaring doctors into not using them.
The question, to me, is this: where do we balance benefits/freedoms from overall harm?
This is also the crux of many issues like alcohol abuse, gun rights, etc. Is it more harmful for the government to intervene than to not attempt to legislate away the source of the problem, at the cost of losing something valued by people in the society?