And I don’t see that happening – at least not any time soon. :)

Would love to talk… mamaliberty – at – rtconnect – dot – net

I just don’t understand it. We put a guy in charge of an agency full of armed goons and give him the title of “czar,” and it doesn’t make him behave nicely. Who could have forseen this?

Because that’s not the DEA’s purpose. The DEA is a terrorist organization, whose mission is to strike fear into anyone who disobeys the government.

-jcr

-jcr

80 Oxycontin a day? i am surprised this did not end up in huge vomiting sessions every day or an overdose.

anyone who requires that much Oxy needs to revisit what meds he is taking, i mean for Pete’s sake, that is almost 5 an HOUR. I take 5 a day (have for the past three years) and i can tell you two things happen everyday: 1. heavy nausea by the last dose; and 2. i get the nods and unfocused vision.

if someone requires 80 pills a day, they have the wrong meds or should be inpatient. i cannot for the life of me understand how someone can take that many pills and NOT overdose. again, this is coming from someone who takes this stuff everyday

Just a few comments: I’ve spoken with thousands of addicts in recovery, and honestly only maybe two or three of them have ever used the “I was prescribed these pills, and next thing I knew I was shooting smack” explanation for their habit. I wouldn’t call it a myth, since I’m sure it does happen, but it plays right into the narrative of “pure, innocent _______ getting unwittingly corrupted by the evil dope” that’s long been part of this country’s toxic, racist history of prohibition.

Other people here have made the point that for pain relief, opioids are the best (and, were it not for the WOD, cheapest) way to go. These drugs don’t cause liver and kidney damage, ulcers or tremors, like non-opioids usually do. In fact, as part of Nixon’s drug war, our wonderful government encouraged the addition of acetaminophen to vicodin, basically poisoning patients’s livers to discourage prescribing of the drug (after decades, the FDA seems to be slowly backpedaling on that one).

Also, the idea that “nonpoor people…have historically avoided severe addiction problems” is totally false. Addicts come from all economic classes. It’s just that money and status can buy someone a degree of social insulation from many horrible government policies; poorer folks don’t have such a luxury.

, I know full well that my body has a physical depandance from that use. The goal of my taking any of the multiple drugs I take daily, is too 1) stay alive a Tad bit longer and 2) having the mind numbing pain I life with controlled just a bit.

If my goal were to be pain free, I can forget it. Wont happen. But after many years of trying various combinations of drugs from over the counter at one end to opiates on the other, I found just the right balance of function and pain relief that works for me. It took me, working with my doctors, almost four years before I got to opiates. I take the lowest possible level that works for me. I have many times, with doc supervision, changed my plan to see if the underlying issues are still really needing the opiates.

I do have a physical dependance, just as I do with the several cardiac drugs I take every day. In fact it is more so with the cardiac drugs. Without them I die.

I guess the group of people that everyone worries about wrt addiction is relatively young and healthy people. If they either have some visible injury that requires oxycontin, or have some hard-to-see cause of pain (like back problems, which can be extremely painful and very hard to do anything about), they can become dependent on the pain medicine both because of ongoing pain and because of addiction, and then this can cause them a lot of problems later on. (Of course, one big source of those problems is the difficulty of getting more oxycontin, which could be resolved by legalization.)

a. Narcotics should be illegal.

and

b. Police, prosecutors, and judges should be extremely reluctant to get between a patient and his doctor and try to micromanage how the patient’s pain is managed.

My guess is that the majority of people would agree with (a) and (b), and that the war on painkillers is the result of bureaucratic and prosecutorial overreach, in a world where they have too much power and not enough adult supervision. So while I suspect drug legalization is a fight we’ll go on losing for awhile, rolling back the DEA harassment of pain doctors is something that would have substantial popular support if it caught a lot of peoples’ attention.

Unless you think we’re storming the barricades soon, the point of this advocacy is to convince the bureaucracy that changes are needed, so a demonstration that there are no feasibility hurdles would be useful.

#1. Overwhelming knowledge that heroin use is more or less suicide, less awareness of the opoid nature of various painkillers and the risk potential.
#2. A drug that starts out expensive and gets steadily more so, thus requiring a user base of nonpoor people, which correlates roughly with people who have historically avoided severe addiction problems. (again, don’t know).

Not exactly conclusive, I’d love to see data.

Maybe industry has no stake in the issue either way, I don’t know. Nonlibertarians can agree that the guy in this story ought to have been able to get whatever he needed to deal with his issue.

Not really interested in debating the larger issue of medical regulation with the peanut gallery. Good luck with the state med board and the civil lawsuits. Try a quick google on our comparative rate of avoidable medical errors vs. the OECD.

Most people who become addicted to prescribed opioids have been on them for long periods of time. Opioids do suck for chronic pain. But I think that the best we can do is just be honest w/ patients about the risks, and let them make an informed decision. Pain or risk addiction? We then need to be more proactive about not losing them to follow-up.

Little known fact.
Heroin was invented to replace morphine as a result of the horrible
dependence/addiction that morphine often led to.
Go Ask Alice.

this guy told me that there were nonopoid painkillers that worked just as well as opoid painkillers, and that the medical industry bankrolled the continued use of opoids to their financial benefit.

Profits are not limited to opoid pain killers. Companies are adept at making profits off of just about anything. Especially with an ambitious DEA on hand to shoot the competition (and not shoot you if you pay up).

As far as “heroin addicts started with legal pain killers”, I can tell you that most prostitutes started with kissing someone. Not that I want to cast prostitution in a negative light (I do not), but you have to be careful about the conclusions you make.

Good news, everyone! We’ve just been misinformed!

Private charity mysteriously does not rush in to fill the gap…

“Worst development of 2012″: People are introduced to the term “free market” and immediately start blasting it without knowing what it actually is. I’m looking at you, John Stewart.