The Growing OPIATE & OPIOID epidemic...

My take is this:

People who use opioids don't have to start using Heroin just because it has become more affordable. They still have the choice to continue accessing opioids by the legal means that they have had since forever.

People who use or could benefit from marijuana shouldn't be denied legal access just because opioid users now have more (however illegal) options to obtain drugs that interest them.

It's past time to allow those who could benefit from marijuana access to their medicine of choice which isn't a narcotic to begin with and shouldn't have ever been classified with the many other drugs that are either banned or controlled by the government.

Anyway you slice it, marijuana doesn't fit in a category with any other drug. Therefore the relevant data pertaining to marijuana can only come from marijuana and nothing else.

 

Could it also be, like mental illness, addiction is better understood today.

Coupled by an epedemic the country had never been through before. What the hell was a car-jacking before then? The ruthlessness and viciousness of the drug trade brought to America's East Coast and FL. Pan-Handle by Griselda Blanco Restrepo, aka the Black Widow.... crack literally scared everyone and bugged users out. I saw the effects of it up close and personal..it was really ugly.

Meth is similar, but these fetanyl and heroin users are more strung out, comatose, docile, od-ing..it's comparative to flakka vs weed, l would say.
Of course sentences were harsher for crack, but it was decimating communities as we know. Which is why judges are now comimg down hard on heroin dealers.

To not care because of the past crack epidemic... it's ignorant. Ignorant to think it won't affect them. Ignorant for the reasons because it makes you no better than others who didnt care during the crack crisis. No thanks, there's nothing worse than to not care that a crisis is gripping this Country.

 

What would you have black people do Bliss? March to get white people help they're already getting?

 

My response to you in the Cosby thread below. Chloe Goins voluntarily dropped her case after it was proven on video that neither she or Cosby was at the place and time she cited, in fact Cosby was proven to be in another state at the time. Im sure you are going to focus on the word "recanted" which she technically did not do, but voluntarily dropping the civil suit after being proven a liar is as good as.


"In the link I posted in the last post there are multiple pictures of Katie. Here is one Cosby accuser, Chloe Goins, that has dropped her case, after the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges in the case citing lack of evidence. http://ew.com/article/2016/02/02/bill-cosby-playboy-mansion-civil-suit-dropped/.

"Chloe Goins, the former model who alleged Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at a Playboy Mansion party in 2008 has abandoned her civil lawsuit against the comedian. On Jan. 6, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced that it found no evidence to warrant criminal charges in Goins’ account. Neither Cosby nor Goins was spotted in exterior video footage of the Aug. 9, 2008 event at the mansion; investigators further found evidence that Cosby was in New York that weekend, and his name had not appeared on any guest lists for events held at the mansion that summer."

 

There is evidence that the CBO was NOT "way off on its Obamacare enrollment forecasts, http://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/cbos-obamacare-predictions-how-accurate/

"Experts also told us that Short’s claim is misleading because even if CBO used the newer baseline to score the Senate health bill, insurance coverage would still drop by many millions. It also ignores the fact that the majority of coverage loss under the Senate bill would be due to changes in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for poor Americans that Obamacare expanded.

CBO predicted that Medicaid coverage would go down by 15 million, while Obamacare marketplace coverage would go down by 7 million. (Table 4)

"(CBO) did significantly overestimate how many people would sign up for the exchanges," said Benjamin Sommers, a health policy professor at Harvard University. "But that’s only one part of CBO's broader set of ACA projections. They were much more accurate about Medicaid enrollment and the total effect on the uninsured population."

We should note that the CBO report said the analysts decided to use the March 2016 baseline instead of the 2017 based on its consultations with the congressional budget committees."

With an issue as complex and complicated as healthcare, it is VERY easy to find "studies" that support numbers pro and con for Obmacare or for the proposed new healthcare plan. The devil is always in the details and a lot just wont be known until whatever plan is approved is actually implemented.

 

Not saying not caring is necessarily right, but I don't think it's wrong either.

A car jacking was probably what other crimes were before the crack epidemic: less frequent. You're right though. The crack epidemic was something we'd never seen before. But oppression, including legal oppression, is something that had always been around. It was nothing new. Going through an epidemic the country had never seen before doesn't exactly excuse the measures that were taken to combat it. It's not just the crack era that leads to these people's "I don't care" stance. Black folks knew where they stood in America long before that. They knew "their place" in the eyes of the rest.

We've got slavery
We've got a century of Jim Crow laws that legally fucked black people on everything from voting to education
We've got the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
We've got redlining. Black people returning from the war so they can be denied a house in a certain neighborhood.
We've got the FBI targeting the Black Panthers, MLK, etc.
We'vengot the crack epidemic.

These social conditions, and others, shaped what a lot of black communities have become and are a reason why many have the feelings they do. One can wonder if crack was destroying white communities back then, if would there be a push to understand addiction more. Back then, blacks were feeling the force of the law for even the tiniest pieces of crack, whether selling or using. In LA, SWAT teams drove tanks into living rooms of "suspected" crackhouses. Sometimes they found a bunch of drugs. Sometimes they found barely any drugs. Sometimes they found nothing. Nancy Reagan on TV, riding shotgun in the battering ram through poor black neighborhoods sent a message. Donald Trump sympathizing with addicts preset day sends a completely different message . On top of that, it was already known that the LAPD was crooked during that time.

Hearing the gov't address the need to combat the opiate/opioid addiction and help those who are addicted is seen as a slap in the face to many of us. It's basically saying "addicts have hope. By law, we are going to help you, the family unit and ultimately the community" to a different group of people. If the crack era was the only instance of the unfair treatment of blacks, you MIGHT see more of us caring(at the same time, it may be too recent still). However, it's just another tally on the count. Regardless if the intentions are genuine and learning from the crack era or it's now sympathizing because addiction affects more than just blacks at an alarming rate, it's too little waaaaaayyyyyy to late. The damage had been done and the message had been received, even way before that time period.

And there are plenty of things worse than not caring about a crisis gripping the country. Actually committing crimes is one.

 

Aaand Idgaf for the record

Count me in this group here. People have always thought bad things about black people anyway. No fucks given.

 

"Say hi to the bad guy"

Lmao

 

I honestly don't see what's so hard to figure out about that shit, man. They got their white man in the White House, let the GOP solve their problems

 

That's complete bullshit! I for one have discussed it with others on this forum. It's an issue I've faced with clients for many years. BTW for those who are going on about both sides of the conversation....the first clients I had who were given the scripts were mostly poc. I was screaming about it all from the time I had patients get the DEA triplicate scripts (before most of the named were even released) that we were going to have a MAJOR problem....and we did... and now guess what it's become a white thing too and NOW we are going to start talking about it.

 

Actually, that's not necessarily true. When the shift started regarding opioids and it became more concerning, it became more difficult to get them. Docs have been told to stop writing those scripts so fast and many have stopped patients cold turkey which is NOT a good idea. This is where many have them have turned to other means. It's a mess....simply put.

I would agree about marijuana being a different category. I have some very mixed feelings about it all though. I'm watching some things going on with it and it's not quite so benign and some of us would like to believe too. I have a tough time because I don't know that regulating everything is the best way either. I think there are valid reasons for people to take things that can be helpful (and may be a much lesser evil than many of the legal meds they are being prescribed) But it's not without issues or concerns either.

 

More difficult to get opioids? Any links you can post?

 

Black people care about addiction. No Black person is ever going to vote against local and federal inpatient and outpatient drug programs.
Very few Black folk are ever going to support harsher sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

The problem is that White people typically racialize addiction and drug offenses, believing they are more descriptive of poor minorities and therefore many White Americans historically choose NOT to care about addiction until it affects THEIR communities.

I've seen both White and Black men and women lose their jobs and families to addiction. It's horrible.

But I also understand that although I care about the suffering of others, I'm not about to march to highlight the opiod crisis in Appalachia and rural White America.

When these same people stop looking at people who look like me as 'other', maybe then I'll see the White opiod addiction as more a societal one and not a racial one.
Like someone else said, most of these addicts come from deep red states. They've got their POTUS in office and control of the House and Senate.
If nothing is done on a federal level to help these people, it's not because Black folks didn't care enough about them.

It's because powerful, wealthy people don't think poor White lives are worth shit.
Unfortunately, that's not the message these people will hear.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already said one of his top priorities was making sure drug offenders were punished to the full extent of the law with longer mandatory sentences.

That's all you need to know. White people don't care about other White people with problems.
Bernie Sanders cares more about the White opiod crisis than the Republicans do as a group. That's really fucking sad.

Asking Black people to care more, when really we're some of the most forgiving, understanding people on the planet, is foolhardy.

 

I don't care. I just can't. I'm over it. Sure, on an individual basis if it's someone I know, I care. And, I'll do all I can to help that person.

But, as a whole? I give the same amount of fucks they gave my comunity; zero. Now, don't get me wrong. The black community shares a big part of the blame because when crack took over, we wanted those harsher sentences just like everyone else.

However, what we didn't want was treatment and after school programs cut. We also didn't want educational and jobs programs cut. And, we sure as he'll didn't want or need to be over policed.

So, if we couldn't get the help we needed, why should I care if they don't? I will simply have the same attitude about it that they had;

It's a moral failing. If those people would just stop being weakminded they could quit. It's just their culture. Their music. After all, it glorifies sex, drugs and rock and roll.

I take a very low dose of Percocet and I never became hooked on opioids, so they shouldn't have either. I don't want my tax dollars going to drug addicts.

When we can all get help equally, I'll fight for them to get treatment. But, not one second before.

 

Just look up the latest guidelines for prescribing or any of the information about reduction. There's a big push to reduce. Some organizations (i.e. Kaiser) is severely reducing the scripts, started doing so a couple of years ago. Which may be a great thing. However, it's not so great when they just stop suddenly and aren't addressing the addictions they already created. Don't get me wrong, they are still waaaaaaaaay over written and plenty are still handing them out like candy. Of course too, for those who lose their medical care they suddenly aren't able to get the scripts.

The real shame in this conversation is that if we as a society would have dealt with previous addiction epidemics, we wouldn't be dealing with more of them...or not to the same extent. But people don't want to deal with things that they don't think affects them and it's easier to demonize people than to try to fix the problems. There will always be new drugs (legal or not) but if we had established an effective method of dealing with it all those years ago, when the new ones come up they could be dealt with much swifter and more effectively. Even with this...if it would have been taken seriously when it started it wouldn't be unfolding as it is now.

 

Yah but you can bet it's not going to go the same way. There will be programs and help....lots of them, and much better. While that's not my area of expertise, I've been hearing more and more buz. It won't be the same. It's not going to be all about throw them in prison. Even if they don't care about the poor, they can't get away from that it's touching their lives....their kid, grandkid, niece, nephew, etc.

I was just talking with a woman the other day who had her teen arrested last year, he's been dealing with drug court and rehab since. It's a soft situation and not a dime out of pocket. All sorts of bending over backwards to help this kid. It's already happening.

 

All kinds of help forTimmy.

3 hots, a cot, a felony record and a loss of voting rights for Ttyron.

 

If they are still overwritten then what I said was true: They have and have always had access to opioids.

Its past time for those who use or could benefit from marijauna to also have legal access.

 

In Florida only these conditions allow you legal access: Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis, HIV, PTSD, ALS, Crohns, Cancer, Epilepsy, and Glaucoma. If you don't have one of those conditions you will have a hard time getting legal access period. It can be done but get ready to jump thru hoops to do it.

People here are not happy with how strict they still are with legal access to marijuana.
Opioids are much more dangerous and addictive yet the government is much less strict on the legal access.

The demonization of marijuana is a false doctrine and is complete and utter bullshit.

 

yep ...it's disgusting.

I literally just got off the phone with someone over this conversation. This is exactly why I didn't go into mental health and drug addiction. I'm much more able to effectively advocate for ALL my clients in the areas I work with.