Indeed it does. Beats the hell out of port-o-potties! Marble floors, art on the walls, and clean. Inquire about the “aspirin”.
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- While I feel the outrage, this is something that you’ll have to provide evidence of widespread occurrence, driving the opioid epidemic.
Yes, we know about Todd Graham. But it’s not clear this is a major factor in the opioid epidemic.
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Also, most doctors are flat out busy. In order to make it through the day and all the medicare and insurance billing, they need an efficient staff. There are almost no bored doctors. And, by extension, there is no shortage of patients. Doctors aren’t afraid of losing patients. They might be afraid for other reasons, but not having a patient switch to another provider.
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Again, you’d have to provide some form of proof that patients doctoring themselves in doctor’s offices is a widespread occurrence, and is driving the opioid epidemic.
Yes, there is doctor shopping and self-doctoring. I’m not saying these things don’t occur. Or even occur a LOT. What I am saying, is that these things are not the sole drivers of the opioid crisis. There’s some complexity here that we need to appreciate.
People want to blame doctors. They are the closest at hand for a big slap. Next in line are pharma companies, and yes, there are a few bad ones. But it’s also pretty clear that illicit opioids are absolutely flooding the country right now.
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You could be right. I am not sure about the data sources on that chart. Hydrocodone was reclassified from Schedule III to II in 2004. It’s entirely possible that it was not being tracked. It was also not as popular.
These drugs didn’t explode in prescriptions until after 2000.
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Its a Smithsonian gallery - in other words no admittance charges.
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I’ve only ever been through DC on my way to other places; I’ve never actually stopped to visit or see any sights.
Duly noted.
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And we know exactly how to fix it, too.
So of course we’re doing the exact opposite of the right thing, thus making it worse, increasing the pain and suffering of millions of Americans.
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I would have thought a Princeton educated person would know not spout uninformed guesses to reporters or to give expert opinion on a subject for which they are not an expert.
What the heck is happening in Romania though?
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Maybe jackbooted thugs murder the drug users before they can manage to overdose? My information concerning Romania is very much out of date.
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Holy shit - Estonia is like Europes’s meth addled trailer park!
Vampires.
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So, in your opinion, how would releasing the law’s prohibition on illicit/legal opioids fix the problem in the USA? And in what time frame?
Maybe it is because I’m not American, but I’ve never heard of the Sackler family. Maybe they aren’t getting the name recognition they are pay for. However, it sounds as though, with the Sackler Gallery, they have provided a great convenience to the community. 
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Most Americans haven’t heard of them because they deliberately place their name only on those institutions frequented most by the top 10% of American society: museum wings, departments and endowed chairs at name-brand universities, highbrow theatres and auditoriums, etc.
If you’re the type of American whose opinion counts (i.e. educated with a lot of discretionary income), chances are you’ve run into the name frequently throughout the English-speaking world over the course of your life. That, along with divorcing the family name from the source of its wealth, is what they’re paying for.
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For example: While the cigarette company Philip Morris retains its name, it’s alter ego Altria is the one that sponsors gallery shows, charities, etc.
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I dobt have any evidence - i only have comments from my friendly neighborhood addicts. They tell me Oxy type prescriptions (approx opioids) are now much harder to get. Instead they prefer to report symptoms consistent with nerve damage. If you work with your hands nerve pain is very common and cant generally be cured. Plus the drugs are a very good second best to opioids or heroin.
Well, for starters, the current rush of patients away from doctor-prescribed and monitored opioids to street-supplied heroin and fentanyl would slow down dramatically. If I could get 10 to 30 codeine/aspirin pills a year from the pharmacist, like Canadians can, I certainly wouldn’t consider street drugs.
(Which would mean far, far less money flowing to criminal syndicates with a history of murder and intimidation and political bribery. That’d be a nice side effect!)
But as one of the articles I linked points out, Portugal did more than just legalize. They also instituted serious harm reduction programs of many kinds, and treated addiction as a medical problem rather than a social one. We can do that for less money than we are currently spending on failed drug wars and failed childhood indoctrination programs.
I believe that if we follow a process similar to Portugal’s, we’ll see things start sorting out in ten years or less, as they did. Whereas if we continue as we are, instead of plateauing, and then decreasing, we’ll see continuing increases in overdose deaths and drug related crime.
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Another problem is the lack of viable alternatives for people in chronic pain. My friend ‘Alice’ has severe fibromyalgia. She was on some heavy painkillers, including oxy, but was trying to wean herself off them and work on alternatives, until the pain clinic where she was going closed abruptly. She’s conserving the last of her prescription for really bad days, but is now perpetually in pain with no clinic willing to accept her as a patient and work with her on moving from opioids to a viable alternative without forcing her to go cold turkey.
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I used to get 3 months worth of pills - full prescription does of 8 pills a day - from a family doctor. I usually took only 4 pills as day - so I could save money. Now I get the 4 a day, and have to see a pain doc every month. It took awhile before I could find a new doc after my family person went to do ER work. Its so much fucking BS.
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dirty little secret of Washington DC.
Most (but not all) of the Museums in the city are operated by the Federal Government and are free. That’s why it’s a great tourist town.
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“Cartel” is such an ugly word. These are hardworking American Wealth Creators, you can’t just talk about them as though they were Mexicans or something!
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