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Title: Drug War Fail: Govt’s Own Study Shows Fatal Overdoses Have Doubled Over 15 Years
Source:
Free Thought Project/National Center for Health Statistics
URL Source: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/dr ... s-doubled/#twFyEw3v4klLFWs6.99
Published: Dec 25, 2016
Author: John Vibes
Post Date: 2017-01-05 10:32:15 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 3280
Comments: 12
Over the years, as the drug war has fueled the ever growing police state in America, the actual drug problem and occurrence of overdoses continues to grow. This fact is obvious to anyone paying attention, however, this was recently confirmed by a US government study, released by the National Center for Health Statistics. According to the study, drug overdoses in the US have increased by 23% between the years of 2010 and 2014. Furthermore, since the year 2000, the occurrence of drug overdoses has doubled. The study also noted that 25% of all overdose deaths in 2014 were attributed to heroin. Many of the other drugs listed in the study for having a high risk of overdose were actually prescription opiates that are very similar to heroin. The study also found that more people than ever are overdosing on Methamphetamines. Methamphetamine overdoses have doubled in just four years, between 2010 and 2014. In the year of 2014 alone, over 47,000 people died from drug overdoses in the US, which is double the rate that was seen just over a decade prior. Deaths from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid like the majority of drugs in the top ten list, have increased by a factor of 2.5 since 2010. In 2010, heroin was fifth on the list of drugs that led to the most overdose deaths, with 3,020. Heroin overdose deaths in 2014 were more than triple that amount. CDC director Tom Frieden explained in a recent interview with PBS that a wide range of opiates are very easy to obtain, through both legal and illegal means. “Really, there are two driving forces. First, doctors are prescribing way too many opioids, for too many conditions, for too long, for too many patients. And this is a major problem. Second, there’s been a flood of illegal opioids, not only heroin, but also synthetic fentanyl and drugs that are inexpensive and widely available. And those two things are making a very difficult problem continue to get worst,” Frieden said. See the interview with Tom Frieden Below: Government representatives and mainstream media pundits act like a solution is mysteriously out of our grasp. However, the solution is obvious, we need to end the war on drugs, including heroin. Heroin addiction is a serious problem, but as counter-intuitive as it sounds, the best way to prevent heroin overdoses is to actually legalize it. Certain areas of the world, like Portugal, where all drugs have been decriminalized, there are far fewer overdoses than there are in prohibition countries. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that drug overdoses are extremely rare in Portugal, and they have some of the lowest rates of addiction in the world. People have the impression that under drug legalization, things would just be out of control and drug addicts would be everywhere, but this is not what actually happens when drugs are legalized. Currently, under the state of prohibition that most of the world experiences, the treatment, and help addicts receive is severely limited, mostly to punishments and highly regulated inpatient and outpatient programs. In an environment of prohibition, the strategy is punishment, instead of harm reduction, which is actually a much more humane, realistic and effective way of handling serious social problems like heroin addiction. Examples of harm reduction tactics would be needle exchange programs, drug testing kits at raves, or supervised safe houses, just to name a few. Teaching condom use for sexual education, instead of abstinence is another example of how harm prevention is applied to other social issues. Also, there is growing evidence that a person’s social, economic and personal factors have a much larger impact on their probability of getting addicted than we previously thought. As I have explained countless times in the past, these types of dangerous knock-off drugs are a direct result of prohibition. If you have missed my previous drug war articles, I will summarize how prohibition makes drugs more dangerous. In the black market, one of the major drawbacks is that there is no accountability among the people selling the drug. Since anyone can get kidnapped and thrown in a cage for even dealing with the stuff, it really doesn’t make sense for people to be plastering their names and logos all over the drugs. In this age of corporate mercantilism logos and branding may seem like a really tacky idea, but when looking at the black market we can see the value in such things. Someone who is selling a product with their name on it, is going to go through far greater lengths to ensure the quality of their product, as opposed to someone who would remain anonymous. The anonymity creates an incentive for people to be dishonest with what they sell, leading to rip-offs or downright contamination of the drug with unwanted harmful substances. This is why there was bathtub gin that would make you go blind if you drank it during alcohol prohibition. This is also the reason why some of the harder street drugs today are cut with toxic chemicals that increase the chance of overdose ten fold. The fact that the drugs need to be smuggled also creates the incentive to make drugs more potent, and thus, in some circumstances more dangerous. The increased potency and decreased availability inevitably leads to a massive increase in cost. The increased cost is a whole other issue with its own unique side effects in regards to drug safety. When the price of the real drugs go up, people just start huffing paint thinner, smoking bath salts and cooking up crystal meth in their basements, which is then even many times more dangerous than the unbranded drugs on the black market. If you want to stop the overdoses, decrease crime, and deal a death blow to the for-profit prison system, there is a simple solution – End the War on Drugs.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Overdoses from prescription opioids are a driving factor in the 15- year increase in opioid overdose deaths. Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. nearly quadrupled, yet there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain that Americans report. Deaths from prescription opioids—drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone—have more than quadrupled since 1999.1 From 1999 to 2015, more than 183,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids. Opioid prescribing continues to fuel the epidemic. Today, nearly half of all U.S. opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid.1 In 2015, more than 15,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids.2 Prescription drug abuse is a epidemic; painkiller and driving addiction and overdose deaths. Every day, 52 people die from opioid pain medications. Every year, 47,000 die from a drug overdose, mostly from prescription pain medications. Opioids are being overprescribed. And it is not children reaching in medicine cabinets who have made drug poisoning the #1 cause of unintentional death in the United States. Adults have been prescribed opioids by doctors and subsequently become addicted or move from pills to heroin. Perhaps even more alarming: 70% of people who have abused prescription painkillers reported getting them from friends or relatives. Most people don't know that sharing opioids is a felony. 3 People who take opioid painkillers for too long and in doses too large are more at risk of addiction and more likely to die of drug poisoning. The numbers are staggering. In a 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health report, the Substance Abuse and Medical Health Services Administration says there are 4.3 million current nonmedical users of painkillers. Nearly 2 million people have painkiller substance use disorders. "Painkillers don't kill pain. They kill people," says Dr. Don Teater, National Safety Council medical advisor. People think taking opioids is the best way to treat pain. But the reality is other non-addictive medicines are just as effective, including many over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen or naproxen.3 Who is at fault? There is plenty of blame to go around. Drugs are cheaper than a multidisciplinary approach to treating pain, and cost savings are what insurance companies like to hear.4 For decades, certain pharmaceutical companies misled the FDA about the risks of opioid dependence in an effort to sell more of the drugs, and three top executives from Purdue Pharma even pleaded guilty to those criminal charges.4 Our federal government has created nearly insurmountable hurdles to studying other therapies such as medicinal marijuana, which has for years been used safely and effectively in other countries for chronic neuropathic pain, one of the most difficult types to treat.4 Most of the blame, however, belongs on the shoulders of the American doctors themselves. [….] The fact is, [doctors] have accepted the tall tales and Pollyannaish promises of what these medications could do for too long. As a community, we weren't skeptical enough. We didn't ask enough questions. We accepted flimsy scientific data as gospel and preached it to our patients in a chamber that echoed loudly for decades.4
#2. To: Gatlin (#1)
The war on drugs is an abject, miserable failure It's time to try a different approach.
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