Isn't it fair to say that since the CDC is investigating and doing research into this issue, that federal dollars are being spent?
What I said was that not one dollar is spent directly to prevent overdose deaths at the federal level. Research <> prevention The point is that we spend tens of billions of dollars prosecuting the drug war. We arrest, try, and incarcerate millions of people (including over 3/4 of a million per year for mar1juana), and since we started on that path, overdose deaths have more than tripled. In 1914, when the Harrison Narcotics Act was passed, it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. In 1972, when Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs," it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. Today, after over three decades of throwing money and lives down the bottomless pit of hardcore prohibition, it is estimated that 1.3% of the population is addicted to drugs. See why I have a problem with this policy yet?
Research may not equal prevention, but it is certainly a necessary part of the prevention process. (and, for the record, you did not use the word 'directly' in your initial post. ) Also (for the most part), in can be inferred that overdoses from illegal drugs have dropped or remained stagnant since the CDC attributes the rise to increases in prescription painkillers and prescription sedatives (along with cocaine). It is certainly an interesting problem. I'd be interested in seeing the stats as to how many folks die because they screwed up with their own prescription and how many died because they obtained the drugs illegally (e.g. phony prescriptions, from someone with a valid prescription, etc.)
I will endeavor to be more precise in the future! But the increases in overdoses during the 1970s and '80s were not due to prescriptions, they were due to illicit drug use. The recent massive increases (60% in 6 years!) could easily be mitigated through harm reduction or eliminated if responsible adults could choose intoxicants that work for them. Either way, it is pretty clear that the drug war is making the problem with overdoses far worse. Agreed. I would suspect that it is mostly due to abuse of illegally obtained drugs, but that is simply an educated guess.
Because beef is legal and we choose to regulate it for the health of the population. We do not provide free treatment for people that overdose on beef, unless something has changed recently. If it has, where do I go for my free lipo. BTW, the USDA has an analog that regulates oxycontin (the FDA). It would be a waste of money for people who use opioids responsibly to have to purchase another prescription that they have no intention of using (not taxpayer money, but a waste nonetheless). My objection was not to things which would not cost taxpayer money though, which was clear from the face of my original post. See above. As for the drug warriors, I would imagine a great many of them are concerned primarily with enforcing the law, while a number of the decision makers are concerned with protecting the drug companies profits, neither of which has anything to do with saving lives.
My concern here has nothing to do with any overarching comments about legalizing drugs, or general themes on the drug war. I specifically am befuddled by the argument used in the article and the posters of the article. The lead up goes like this: Purdue Pharma introduces Oxycontin in 1996 The rise of the internet around the same time introduces avenues for diversion of pharmaceuticals from licit use. So around 2000 we have new more powerful drugs and greater availability of drugs for diversion to recreational use. This coincides with a massive increase in overdose deaths. So using these three points, somehow the logical explanation is that we should make these drugs more available? Isn't that a little lapse of logic? If the introduction of new factors = increase in negative outcomes, shouldn't we reverse the introduction of those new factors? Isn't that the logical course of action? Again, I'm not talking about any greater logic about the drug war, or whatever. In this specific case, the remedy to the immediate problem seems to very obviously be to reverse the changes that have occurred since the death rate was much lower. To somehow think that making drugs more available will lower deaths based on this specific evidence/instance is a massive disconnect in logic.
Well, what do you suppose we do? NOTHING!!! There isn't anything law enforcement can do to stop drugs in the U.S. Its a waste of money and filling up jails with people who did nothing to hurt anyone else. I say legalize all drugs. If someone wants to do something to their own body, hell let them do it.
I think you are missing the point of both the article and the subsequent posts. The only increase in drug availability that has been argued in this thread is naloxone, a drug whose only effect is to counteract opioid overdoses. The widespread availability of that drug would save lives. BTW, reversing the "introduction of those new factors" will prove to be impossible, unless you are talking about banning Oxycontin altogether. I don't see the Internet being scrapped because some people use it to distribute illegally obtained prescription drugs. On the overarching drug war issue, if responsible adults could choose their own intoxicants and were educated as to the proper use of those intoxicants, I believe that overdose deaths would decrease even if we saw higher usage rates. This would become even more the case if the pharmaceutical industry were allowed to experiment to find newer and safer intoxicants to replace the true killers: cocaine, heroin, and Oxycontin. Again, I refer to the statement above: In 1914, when the Harrison Narcotics Act was passed, it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. In 1972, when Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs," it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. Today, after over three decades of throwing money and lives down the bottomless pit of hardcore prohibition, it is estimated that 1.3% of the population is addicted to drugs. It certainly appears that no matter the legal status on drugs, we will have a fairly constant number of actual addicts. That was the case when Bayer made heroin available to anyone with the money, was the case before Nixon started us on our current path, and continues to be the case today. Since that is the case, the two issues we should concern ourselves with are keeping kids from getting drugs and reducing the negative impacts that drug use has on our society. The drug war doesn't adequately address either of these issues.
Naloxone was not available before the increase. It was not available after. It is therefore a non-factor in relation to the problem. Oxycodone was available before Purdue introduced oxycontin. The big difference is that Purdue convinced everybody that their time release version was safe, so it was prescribed by doctors freely. That is the problem here. Fix that problem to return to pre-oxycontin OD levels. I see no evidence that Naloxone would have any more than a nominal effect. Most of the heroin OD's that I know of involve individuals who shoot alone and are already dead as a doornail when someone else finds them. There was an episode of 'Intervention' on last night about this. 'Intervention in Depth: Heroin Hits Home' about oxycontin and heroin. The problem is the increased legal availability of oxycodone. In this instance, making a drug available more readily through legal channels has resulted in a disaster. If 1.3% of the population was addicts before oxycontin was available, and 1.3% after, then drug regulation is a rousing success, since the addicts stay the same and the variable that is changing and affecting deaths is the availability of drugs. This is proof that when you make very addictive drugs more readily available, the rate of OD deaths will increase.
They have tried to return to pre-oxy policies by clamping down on pain relief doctors, but the levels have continued to increase. Naloxone is a non factor now, but could be a huge factor if it were more freely available. You would be surprised how many addicts would keep something like naloxone available if it were easier to acquire. During my time as a drug abuse counselor, I was incredibly surprised at how many users kept things like adrenaline shots around, even though administering an adrenaline shot is incredibly difficult compared to naloxone, which is an IM injection. Actually, the biggest problem is the improper use of such drugs, which returns us to the harm reduction and regulated distribution aspect of my argument against the wider drug war. If everyone who wanted to use recreational pharmaceuticals was educated as to the proper use of the drugs, far fewer people would OD. If safer drugs were developed for recreational use, we could further reduce OD deaths. The big problem that nobody talks about is the fact that the drug war causes people to look for alternatives to the demonized drugs like heroin. People who once abused Vicodin decided that they would like to try Oxy and, since they don't have to go see a drug dealer to get it, they figured it was safer than going out to get heroin. Unfortunately, the lethal dose for Oxy varies wildly from person to person and is incredibly difficult to calculate. The continuation of the drug war ensures that strong painkillers will continue to be diverted to the black market where they will continue to kill people. Regulating recreational pharmaceuticals will help to reduce OD deaths by getting these issues into the open where people can talk about them. Taking law enforcement out of drug policy will also get people more willing to call healthcare professionals when they or their fellow users are having issues, a call that is hard for many to make when they might get arrested for it. I suppose you would be correct if availability of drugs was the only variable. However, the variable that I see as key is the ratcheting up of the drug war. The more we spend, the more we oppress and suppress drug users, the more we incarcerate, the more we see the problems with prohibition impacting our society. We saw exactly the same dynamic during alcohol prohibition. It is also interesting to note that when Bayer originally introduced heroin, there were hardly any overdose deaths worldwide as a result of a regulated product being sold with explicit instructions for its use. Only after we really started cracking down (after 1972) did we see heroin OD deaths spike. This is a perfect example of a highly addictive drug being made available with no increase in OD deaths. Prohibition is what is fueling the ODs and the more we crack down, the more people we will kill with our policy.
All this can lead to is more restrictions on prescription drugs which is bad. How many of these OD's were suicides?
According to the CDC reports, none of the numbers mentioned were suicides. They were all "accidental" overdoses.
