Opinion on opioids

WIVB grabbed my attention yesterday with a story on opioid deaths.  Yes, they are on the rise due to over prescription,  their highly addictive nature,  doctors don't know (because they haven't been taught) how to wean people off of them when they are properly prescribed ...  a whole host of reasons are to blame for this crisis.

There was the arrest, trial, conviction of "Dr Feelgood" in Niagara Falls for his deliberately over prescribing these deadly drugs to people that didn't need them.

The Buffalo News jumped in with a story on drug deaths that complimented WIVB-TV.  What really grabbed my attention was the statement that opioid related deaths are rising in the suburbs.  Inner city - poor, African American, Hispanic, migrants, immigrants,  so what?  Suburbs - rich, upper class (or upper middle class), and predominantly white. According to the Buffalo News article 174 of the 201 deaths were white.  The remainder were split between African Americans (14) and Hispanics (10).  Ninety (90) of the deaths were in Buffalo.  17 lived in rural communities.   That leaves 80 in the suburbs.  This really is a disturbing trend to the power elite.

Rural areas periodically get in on the drug problem.  I read about meth labs being busted,  people being nailed with marijuana, some heroin, etc.

It's the rise in deaths from opioids in the affluent white suburbs that is creating the concern.  Everyone else is evidently disposable?  Not newsworthy? Just another statistic?

According to the News article,  people get hooked on the painkillers,  can't get any more refills on the prescriptions,  and then go to the cheap heroin that is more readily available on the street,  in spite of the ongoing "war on drugs."  (How you declare a war on an object is beyond me.)

Street bound heroin is being laced with Fentanyl,  a high strength pain killer used in cancer treatment, for an even stronger high.  Add to that the Mexican cartels,  which in spite of the war on drugs and the arrests of the narco chiefs,  are still going strong.  Even after the US & Mexico arrested "El Chapo," three times now, the Sinaloa Cartel sprouted new leaders to take his place.  Like the many headed hydra of Greek mythology - strike one head and another rises in its place.  CounterSpin  had a good interview on that very issue.

Narcan is available to stop deaths from overdoses,  but that's still just a stopgap measure.

Gloucester (spelled Gloster), MA has an innovative program that saves the taxpayers money and addresses the addiction problem sounds promising.  Any addict that wwalks into a police station and surrenders their drugs is, via an "Angel Program," sent to a rehab program that gets them off the drugs.  The "Angel Program" is funded by volunteers and donations.  It takes $220 to arrest someone and only $55 to get them into rehab.   Instead of treating the addict like a criminal,  it treats them the addiction like a social problem,  which is what it really is.  In some cases,  the addict leads the police to the dealers,  which deals with that aspect of the problem for a short period of time.  New dealers always spring up. (I was not able to find a link to this story.  I will link to it when I am able to.)

So,  how do we deal with this problem?

First:  Let's teach doctors how to prescribe these deadly and dangerous drugs properly - how to use them to reduce pain and how to wean people off of them so that they don't get addicted.

Second:  Let's get doctors trained so that they know how to treat pain without pills.  I suffer from severe migraines - three different types.  I have a prescription for a bottle of "black box" pain killers that I don't want to fill.  A friend of mine was teaching me some yoga and,  for some reason that neither of us understand, downward facing dog eliminated the headache that I had that usually is a precursor to a migraine.  I've discovered that some of my migraines are related to sinus pressure and I have a deviated septum.  Simple surgery will fix that.  That or a non-addictive decongestant.  What other non-drug pain relieving methods are there?  Can we take them seriously?

Third:  We need to stop criminalizing the addict.  Addiction is a social problem.  America has made it a criminal issue.  Prisons are not trained to handle drug addiction and keeping a person in society close to what matters to them can improve recovery rates.

Fourth:  In cases where a drug addiction has led to a crime,  is imprisonment always the best option?  Is restitution an option?  Will that teach a person more than locking them up in a cell?  Judges need more discretion than the minimum sentencing laws allow.

We need to change the way we deal with drugs and addiction.
What we are doing isn't working.
That is,  if the goal is to put an end to drug abuse.