Nailed It!
Donald Trump may have finally nailed it when he proposed that people who deal opioids be given the death penalty.
Even Texas, the most executing state in the union found it to be “kind of over the top.”
I disagree.
When I get to see all the heads of big pharm and a whole mess of doctors taking bribes to prescribe opioids lined up on death row to be given their own drugs, that might not be over the top.
The opioid crisis is not starting in the streets or even the Mexican border – it’s starting (and sometimes ending) in the doctor’s office.
By the way, several sources ( here, here, here, and of course, here) say the way to end the opioid crisis is marijuana.
I so agree, someone has to start the opioid addiction train. Doctors should receive long jail sentences, they are the drug dealers after all!
1I’m certain that there are plenty of doctors and pharm execs worthy of condemnation and punishment for the opioid epidemic, but blanket condemnation of doctors misses some history. Back in the ’90’s, there was a genuine and conscientious push from the AMA and other bodies to take more stock of the pain that patients were experiencing. The impetus to prescribe opioids wasn’t solely commercial, and in the beginning was relatively free of commercial concerns. The balance clearly swung way too far in the other direction – with purely commercial motivations coming to dominate – but I think most doctors entered into the process out of an honest desire to mitigate suffering. That this also came with a bit of naivete as far as addiction is regrettable, but don’t paint with such a broad brush; the pressures from patients to prescribe painkillers was (and is) enormous.
2Trump will put the skids on the project when his Big Pharma buddies and contributors are found to be providing incentives to their pet pill doctors. He very sincerely wants it to be some Hispanics.
3In my home state of West Virginia there were two small towns that took delivery of millions of opioid pills. Millions of pills in a town of under 1000 population? I hope there is prosecution, but one of Big Pharma’s puppets in Congress got a law passed that they cannot be held responsible.
4I have to respectfully disagree.
5I used opioid pain meds for years, I would not have been able to get out of bed and when I first started my 3 kids were home.
I was always monitored by my physician carefully and decreased the dose when I could.
I was able to get off the meds almost 3 years ago, I have a spinal cord stimulator implant. I was one of the lucky ones, it works reasonably well for me.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but denying physicians and patients the ability to control pain for those that need it, including cancer pain, is not right either.
Sorry! Can not agree here! Docs & Pharma don’t give pain meds and they are demons who don’t care. They make drugs to treat your so called “pain” and they are drug dealers! Sorry! But you all are adults so THINK!!!! if the drug is OK then use it, want to abuse it? Tuff! Your problem!! ALL meds have side effects and you all should know what they are or you should grow up, and take responsibility!! I use drugs when needed and I also ask for the mildest versions first! And then learn to use other methods if available.
6ANd YES I do know there are docs out there that will give you crap if you insist on it. Like dimwits who scream at their doc to give them antibiotics for their cold! But the doc is just as dim for giving in to them.
Remember eliminating a drug dealer DOES NOT stop drug use. As shown by the completely failed war on drugs and the previous fail of alcohol prohibition!
I always suspect easy social answers are usually quit st00pid answers too.
Pour Encurrager Les Autres, May I suggest starting with that famous of opiate abusers Rush Lowbrow.
7I took a client to her doc’s appt and sat in with her. Client had back pain and insisted that only oxycontin helped and she had to have more because she had lost her previous bottle of pills. The more insistent she became, the more resistant doc was to prescribing more. Doc offered other resources including non-narcotic meds, a pain clinic, etc. I suspected my client of selling meds too.
My primary care physician is tough about prescribing pain meds. She’s very reluctant to, but will when it’s really necessary. I had a doc once, briefly, whose attitude was, tell me what you want, I’ll prescribe it, the end. I had no respect for her and didn’t stick around.
8I have to weigh in with the dissenters. I have degenerative disc disease, which means that every few years, I have a disc rupture and crush the nerves that run down my spine into the vertebra in front of the nerve cluster. On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being childbirth, it’s a 13.
9I don’t need them all the time (and take great care in reducing / stopping my pills when not needed), but when I need them, I need them badly.
Please don’t throw my baby out with your bathwater.
The death penalty for evil drug dealers? Can we start with Martin Shkreli?
10I don’t take opioids yet, but they may be my next step. Clearly this is a nuanced problem and we do not have a nuanced president. As usual he has taken a complex issue and pronounced a childishly simple “solution.”
11I agree that this whole mess is really, really complicated. (But who knew health care was complicated?) I certainly can’t argue with those who depend on these drugs for their comfort, and I suspect that a lot more people use them judiciously than abuse/sell them.
But I also agree with JJ that we need to consider marijuana as an alternative. It might not be as effective (I have no idea; I don’t even take acetaminophen unless I’m feeling–for me–pretty bad), but if it would even delay the need for opioids, it could be a good starting place.
Sorting out the “legal” drug dealers (responsible doctors) from the “illegal” ones could get to be a nightmare. We have to look at other alternatives.
12Primarily as Rhea expressed, pain alleviation is nuanced. And, as djw expressed, it’s complicated. As one of the lucky people who has a higher than average tolerance to pain combined with a really low tolerance for drugs, I am not and hopefully will never be an ass condemning others for how they feel and deal.
Let’s consider a standard deviation rule of thumb as to how and why doctors prescribe pain medication. A doctor in a region of back issues or maybe a prevalence of cancer would understandably prescribe more pain relief than average. However, that does not preclude a common sense approach to censoring doctors who blow way beyond a standard deviation to prescribe to the rate of millions of pills in small towns with populations in the low thousands. That is neither complicated nor nuanced.
Both patients and doctors deserve better choices such as medical marijuana and alternatives to opioids. On the good news front, there is reported to be some progress in developing a new pain reliever both more effective than opioid and considerably less addictive.
Have never been a fan of the death penalty. But if Congress and Donnie choose to pursue that path maybe they’d be amenable to receiving the death penalty for their obstruction in funding medical research.
13I’m glad I live in Oregon.
14I’m not opposed to marijuana. I used it lightly back in the 1970’s to help with sleep issues.) The problem with marijuana now (as I see it) is most of the strains are very, very strong. And consequently, they are very expensive. Maybe they need to lighten up for us old folks in our mid-70s!
15Another person with chronic pain checking in. Blaming doctors is not the solution and forcing a system where only pain specialist will proscribe pain medication is worse. It sounds reasonable but it’s totally absurd to separate pain from the cause of pain, they’re sort of related. What this really means is that most of my health care dollars go to paying a double co-pay to see someone monthly who has no understanding of underlying issues of my health.
Marijuana is not a blanket solution. I have been a dope smoker for most of my life but it does not take the place of pain meds, for me. I use it to stop me from abusing the Vicodin but that’s it, for what ever reason ingesting marijuana is bad in my system. I am not alone. Some people get relief from it and that’s great but not everyone. I am far more apt to point to inadequate health care as the bigger cause of the opioid crisis. I was ruined in a surgery because I was poor and didn’t get adequate health care after the surgery. If I had I probably wouldn’t have been stuck depending on drugs just to maintain a teeny tiny life. Now there is no going back. Drugs or not moving, those are my only choices.
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