Topic: opioids

I don’t think there are any health benefits associated with the practice; it’s purely about getting high.

In the past, we’ve flung opioids at the problem, and haven’t developed alternatives.

That’s not a large percent of the user population, but it’s among the sickest. That along might be enough to justify the investment; I’m sure a number of lives have been saved along the way.

Not everybody wants to remain dependent on pain medication. But at present, we offer few if any alternatives to doing it on your own.

Perhaps more important, the patient could begin to resume a normal life.

Once a problem such as opoid overprescribing is widespread, entrenched in practice, good luck eradicating it with new laws.

Much of the chronic user’s life is taken up by anxiety, about where future doses will come from.

It does seem ironic that the industry most responsible for the creation and continuation of our current opioid epidemic could also be the main beneficiary of this next wave of treatment funding.

Maybe they reasoned that even if they were caught out, they could avoid the worst penalties.

“…over the past five years, less than 10% of the nearly $40 billion in tobacco payments went towards such efforts.”