Opiod deaths passed the 30,000 mark in the US in 2015, an increase of nearly 5000 deaths from 2014. Deaths from drugs like fentanyl rose by 75% from 2014 to 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and for the first time there were more deaths from heroin than from the traditional opiod painkillers, such as hydrocodone and oxycodone. In the late 2000s, when States tried to crack down on the prescriptions for painkillers , the result was that the supply went underground. Serious addicts apparently take a combination of illicit drugs, along with alcohol. Opiod addiction can be treated with a substance called naloxone, but it seems it is not sufficiently available to counteract the huge increase in opiod use. Congress, doing something useful for a change, did pass a bill making $1 billion available to treatment and prevention, but it is thought by many that arrest for the use of the illicit drugs is standing in the way of reversing the epidemic. Criminalization and stigma makes people hide up their addiction (statistics from the Washington Post December 9, 2016).
What I would like to know is whether taking these drugs is a sign of genuine physical pain, or whether the problem is, basically, one of joblessness, hopelessness and wanted to utterly tune out, sometimes permanently. If there is truth in this, it adds a new dimension to the dreadful economic and morale crisis among so many formerly middle class people.
It appears that 38% of doctors do not discuss alternatives to opiods; 35% do not warn about addiction; 30% don’t talk about side effects; nor do they warn against mixing pain killers with anti-anxiety and depression medications.
Of course these might well be the very same doctors, in which case they have a serious professional and ethical problem. Users say they use opiods to relieve stress, to “get high” or to relax. Only 23% of regular users work full time
(The above figures come from a leading article in today’s Washington Post, an article that seems to offer different figures from those carried by the Post yesterday (this illustrates an important point. The journalist decry false news articles, but they themselves frequently offer up misleading or badly expressed information which are themselves misleading. Let me know if you spot an instance of this).
This makes me very sad. It’s a shame many people feel the need to resort to opioids- I’m sure it’s something to do with a high stress society, the sort Epicurus warned against. There ought to be far more regulations on when opioids can be prescribed, they should only be given if they are the only means by which an ailment can be treated, and in the vast majority of cases, they are not. I think there should also be better education in schools against the use of opioids, the way there is against unprotected sex.
Most importantly, there needs to be a culture change. It’s all very well the government telling people not to use them, but unless people decide for themselves to quit, there’s not actually a huge amount the government can do. If you banned opioids altogether, you would just create an unregulated black market, which would be much more dangerous for users, and would fund criminal gangs.