Good point. The opioid crisis was blamed on doctors overprescribing narcotics. Well, opioid prescriptions are down by over HALF from a decade ago, and yet overdoses increase year after year.
People are turning to drugs because their material conditions are worsening. They have less money to spend and their money doesn’t go as far as it used to. It’s far easier to blame this crisis on physicians or drug smugglers, so that’s why they push that angle.
Some truth here. As someone who is at the point of contact with these overdoses, my observations are as follows.
Druggies will get high no matter what. There is no real increase in the numbers of these people. When they had access to pills, ODs were rare. They knew the strength of what they were taking and the highs were repeatable and predictable.
Take away the pills, and the once dwindling heroin trade blossoms. Heroin dealers are the ones that love fentanyl. It costs much less than pure heroin and makes a fantastic cutting agent to increase profit. The problem is there is no control of potency. So each mix is different. Now when said addict picks up his latest score, he has no idea what the strength of the product is until he shoots up. So a 1/4ml did him right last week, this week it is deadly.
Take away the heroin they will find something else. Period. It cannot be stopped. They will be back to huffing gold and silver spray paint if nothing else is available.
There is nothing inherently wrong with medical fentanyl. Now people with true pain to treat such as cancer and real debilitating orthopedic issues can not get the treatment they need. Recently Senators Manchin and some R I cannot recall wrote an article which claimed “opioid prescribing is up 4 times since 2009”. Total opposite is true. Blatant lies or completely stupidity by our leaders. No one called their bullshit and Fox News published the article. This is like 80s Soviet propaganda.
The “fix” is worse than the original problem. Such is government response.
