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The pharma companies are merely a useful scapegoat for the real cause: awful state policies. This is blatantly obvious after only a small amount of research, li
by pitaj 7y ago
The pharma companies are merely a useful scapegoat for the real cause: awful state policies. This is blatantly obvious after only a small amount of research, like the fact that opioid overdoses have increased as opioid prescriptions have decreased.
The government restricting the supply of opioid painkillers has only served to push those who need them into the black market. Blaming companies like Purdue is only playing into the same talking points as the drug warriors: evil dealers pushing dangerous drugs onto innocent people.
We need to decriminalize and legalize all drugs: possession, creation, and distribution.
- dpark 7y ago> The government restricting the supply of opioid painkillers has only served to push those who need them into the black market This is a pretty shallow summary of the actual state of affairs. Yes, people who need drugs have been forced into the black market. But so have people who are addicts. Legalizing might or might not help, but it doesn’t help to pretend that everyone is a chronic pain sufferer. The reality is that for decades many people were handed highly addictive painkillers for relatively minor pain (and for too long for acute pain). The end result is an epidemic of addiction. Those addictions didn’t evaporate when doctors started to reduce the frequency of opiate prescriptions. Hence the shocking reality that “opioid overdoses have increased as opioid prescriptions have decreased.” Well, yeah. A bunch of addicts have turned from Oxycodone to heroin.
- s1artibartfast 7y agoI don't think your points are mutually exclusive. In both cases, negligent government policy is fueling the deaths. They are killing chronic pain sufferers and addicts alike, and addicts are sick humans too.
- dpark 7y agoAbsolutely. I just don’t like the disingenuous pro-legalization argument that pretends that “restricting the supply of opioid painkillers has only served to push those who need them into the black market” as if that’s anything close to the whole story.