Not just OxyContin. Also Heroin, Meperidine and Tramadol.
We get another "morphine, but safe this time" in pretty reliable 40 year intervals. I guess someone decided OxyContin doesn't count and we are due for another one
We get another "morphine, but safe this time" in pretty reliable 40 year intervals. I guess someone decided OxyContin doesn't count and we are due for another one
0) Zero tolerance! We still remember how it ended last time!
1) But ... pain medication helps against anything. From headaches to hernia to bone cancer (of course in some cases it's in a "die somewhat dignified" sense). And in quite a few cases it's the only thing that helps ... In the medical sense of "helping", after all medicine can't make people live forever so that can't be the goal. The goal is better quality of life, ie. mostly longer life, including the ability to live (think "sing, dance and play tennis") ... and not life at any cost.
The problem here is that this is an entirely correct argument. Some diseases are either incredibly painful or long-term painful. Bone cancer or hernia can serve as examples. We cannot really help such people (by that I mean: not in a way that the pain stops). So can we at least make their life livable?
2) This pain medication sure helps these very seriously ill people well. But X suffering is at least as bad as bone cancer! X then is everything from still serious diseases, psychological suffering, and of course this then goes down and down until someone points out pain medication also helps existential dread and lackluster parties.
Again, all of that ... is true. That's not the problem.
3) The medication becomes the problem. Mostly because of what people do to get money for their fix (and the crime, prostitution, ... that it leads to). But this is not the only problem. It makes people who broke a bone last week go skiing again. And ... I'm almost afraid to say it but you can increase the effect of morphine ... by damaging yourself. You can guess how that ends.
The problem is that pain medication, irrespective of whether it's physically ("biologically") addictive is addictive. Anybody who's had a serious pain for a week, say kidney stones, knows that they would have sacrificed their favorite cat for it to stop. The problem is not just that morphine is addictive. The problem is the pain, and the fact that pain medication is a temporary non-fix.
4) The medication becomes the problem, but doesn't just affect patients. It goes from "you know this funny thing happened to my niece ... and she did it to herself ..." to it destroys families, neighborhoods, childhoods ...
Result: ONLY ONE SOLUTION! ZERO TOLERANCE!
GOTO 1.
* Herniated disk in the spine * A "hernia": is the abnormal exit of tissue or an organ, such as the bowel, through the wall of the cavity in which it normally resides.[
If you think of your abdomen as a bag full of tubes, a fistula is a hole in the tube that connects to something else. A hernia is a hole in the bag, that the tube can poke through.
Im guessing English isn't your first language? Fistel is not a commonly used term.
Any kind of rational change in policy is not happening as long as entire lucrative industries of policing, health care and religion-as-a-social-service are dependent on the dependent.
I'm curious about this sentence -- to what are you referring, and where specifically in Europe?
The government‘s not passing out drugs in the street, like US media likes to suggest.
It isn't the same drug as fentanyl, but it never really stopped being the plan that we will take people from 'the list' and just keep metering opiates out indefinitely. GGP posted this in a way that seemed to allude this was not currently the case.
The temperance movement was mainly related to alcohol. There were groups who wanted abstinence from everything but that was not its primary focus. They may have played a part in said act but I don't know. They were definitely not the driving force behind it though. Racism played a bigger role than the temperance movement. The government was also aware there was a very real problem with drug addiction.
You might say they won't be able to sell enough foodstamps or welfare even then to come up with the money legally, but it'd still be way less crime.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#/media/Datei:Bayer_Hero...