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People are looking for anyone to blame. Drug reps. Doctors. Pharmaceutical firms. Now we've entered the "politicians/the media is to blame" stage. When someth

People are looking for anyone to blame. Drug reps. Doctors. Pharmaceutical firms. Now we've entered the "politicians/the media is to blame" stage. When something goes wrong in this spectacular a fashion, you can bet people will try to lay blame wherever they can. But probably the truth is that this was on all of us. Doctors for prescribing without disseminating incredibly pertinent information, Parmas for creating "medicinal" opioids in the first place, politicians for not admitting the need for stronger regulation earlier, media for not covering the story better earlier, the people for being in denial about the obvious signs of addiction in their friends and loved ones. I mean the list probably goes on and on.

Loughla 7y ago
I'm with you on this. It's like conspiracy theories - people WANT someone to point to and say, "that is the person in charge, they're the reason this has happened." When in most cases, a really, truly shitty situation like this one does rely on the action of a few, powerful, bad actors, but mostly it's daily choices to simply not think made by all of us.
- walshemj 7y ago
  Instead of banning any advertising of prescription meds to the general public.
luckylion 7y ago
The companies typically pay the doctors, donate to the politicians and buy ads in the news media for friendly reporting. "Who is to blame" is not that hard to figure out, the more subtle question is whether those who took the money and provided the services are complicit or whether they were totally bamboozled and just didn't do their jobs well.
vkou 7y ago
You're missing the elephant in the room. Our society's piss-poor ability to deal with addiction. Once the system recognizes you as an addict, the moral crusaders in our justice system will do their damn best to limit you to provably ineffective forms of treatment, like 12-step programs. Methadone maintenance? Don't even think about it. Getting you off black-market drugs? Don't even think about it. While everyone's busy arguing about who is at fault for getting millions of people addicted, we continue to treat addiction like we are still in the 'leeching and trepanning' stage of medicine.

Loughla 7y ago

I'm with you on this. It's like conspiracy theories - people WANT someone to point to and say, "that is the person in charge, they're the reason this has happened." When in most cases, a really, truly shitty situation like this one does rely on the action of a few, powerful, bad actors, but mostly it's daily choices to simply not think made by all of us.

walshemj 7y ago
Instead of banning any advertising of prescription meds to the general public.

luckylion 7y ago

The companies typically pay the doctors, donate to the politicians and buy ads in the news media for friendly reporting. "Who is to blame" is not that hard to figure out, the more subtle question is whether those who took the money and provided the services are complicit or whether they were totally bamboozled and just didn't do their jobs well.

vkou 7y ago

You're missing the elephant in the room. Our society's piss-poor ability to deal with addiction. Once the system recognizes you as an addict, the moral crusaders in our justice system will do their damn best to limit you to provably ineffective forms of treatment, like 12-step programs. Methadone maintenance? Don't even think about it. Getting you off black-market drugs? Don't even think about it. While everyone's busy arguing about who is at fault for getting millions of people addicted, we continue to treat addiction like we are still in the 'leeching and trepanning' stage of medicine.