‘Battling’ the Demon Opioid
Government’s justification of authoritarianism and bigotry.
We’re tolerating the incessant intolerance of public leaders like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claim government must do SOMETHING to save drug addicts from themselves, and who believe chronic pain patients are nothing but drug addicts in disguise (except the ones who *deserve* pain relief). Why do most people continue to accept this bigotry? Is it ignorance, fear, or something more sinister? Every person needs to ask themselves, and demand an answer.
We harbor an instinctive drive to hide information as a survival mechanism, which is why irrational fears still exist about drug use. These beliefs are morally and logically indefensible for several reasons. We don’t express the same hatred for our own compulsive use of substances like alcohol or sugar, which kills many times the number of people, or for our own obsessive actions. We pick and choose which drugs and behavior to demonize, and we draw a false moral line. We all do it at times, but I reject moral relativism. Everybody should.
There is an objective right and wrong, and anybody who doesn’t support allowing individual people to choose what to ingest is a backwards-thinking person. Unfortunately, most of our political leaders, researchers, health professionals, and journalists are backwards thinkers when it comes to developing policy. Today, few public servants are either classical liberals or conservatives in ideology. Instead, nearly all of them in both major parties are neo Marxists — a group of egomaniacal elitists who use fear mongering and misleading information (fake news) to cause deliberate regression in our society.
Sure, anyone can easily fool themselves by saying there’s a crisis or epidemic — we must do something! No, we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t use government to solve every problem, especially when statistics are being manipulated and false memes are being marketed (with tax dollars). The principle of individual liberty shouldn’t be abandoned except in rare circumstances, and arguably never. For example, an opportunity to prevent a terrorist act might be cause for justifying the use of excessive force or “pre-crime” tactics by government. Monitoring databases of innocent people, drug testing, threats and intimidation. These are the obstacles for people who suffer from chronic pain — not suspected terrorists. These are the tools of authoritarians.
What about the argument that we must do something to save the children? No. Children must be taught by parents rather than politicians what they should and shouldn’t ingest. Some children are too young to be left alone without supervision, which is why they have supervision. The DEA can terrorize more doctors, and teenagers are still going to have to decide for themselves whether to ingest an unidentified pill sitting in a party bowl. It’s better that pill be a legally made opioid in such a circumstance. Even if they have the genes and home environment making them susceptible to addiction — which is extremely rare — at least they’re alive.
Other excuses for demonizing legal opioids are equally inane. So arguing that greater exposure of the public to legal opioids is more dangerous is completely false. Demonizing opioids is a poor reason to give up individual choice, especially for an important drug class used for pain relief for centuries. I have always thought crystal meth was an “evil drug,” but some children benefit from using drugs like Ritalin and adderall. We should allow government to test and approve drugs to make sure they’re reliably made, but it doesn’t make rational sense to allow government to market the demonization of a substance, or even more generally to moralize regarding the use of substances. If someone is tripping over their own feet or delusional, their behavior should be assessed at face value (locally, not by the federal government). It certainly makes no sense to fabricate prejudices against legally approved drugs that benefit masses of people, but that’s what our current public leaders are doing. They encourage the most vile forms of prejudice when they declare war on substances.
Our government (elected leaders, the CDC, FDA, DEA, and other agencies) currently considers deaths where people misuse legal opioids as having been caused by prescribed drugs — even when the person intentionally kills themselves, uses someone else’s medication, mixes opioids with other drugs and alcohol, and even when the drug used is an illicitly made opioid. All of these instances are methodologically and morally dishonest, and this only scratches the surface of the dishonesty in the bureaucracy. Data explanations by federal researchers can no longer be trusted. Misleading information is spread about overdoses and addiction every day, and chronic pain is intentionally kept out of the conversation.
As deaths grow from the use of illicit fentanyl sold as other drugs in the black market— killing an increasing percentage of addicts because of unknown potency — these policy makers continue to blame legal opioids. They refuse to admit error. They falsely believe the demands of those suffering from painful conditions somehow caused an “opioid epidemic” and think it’s their duty to take over the decision making of millions of doctors and patients. It’s blatant authoritarianism in the United States of America, based on false knowledge. Even though these terrible leaders want to take over individual decision making — they can’t. It’s impossible. The only thing bad policy does is cause suffering and death by erasing safer options.
These egomaniacs, along with misguided researchers, professionals, and even journalists, have childishly returned us to the days of “Reefer Madness” and Prohibition. They disregard the truth about causes of death and assume every overdose is a story about someone who “got addicted” after being prescribed legal opioid medication by a doctor or dentist, which is something that rarely happens. What commonly happens is that human beings desperately look for something to blame other than their own choices for all of their failures. It’s not surprising how everybody just knows how evil doctors handed out opioids like candy for a generation and got everybody addicted — except that never occurred. Nothing remotely similar has ever occurred.
Our own government and state pharmacy and medical boards are fueling bigotry against chronic pain patients. Elderly people, injured veterans, intractable pain and disabled patients, and many others who use opioids are being arbitrarily cut off from access to their medication every day, using the logic that this will somehow save drug addicts — when the opposite has been occurring for years in states like Florida. The extreme limitations placed on obtaining legal opioids has only been driving drug addicts to heroin as an initiating drug of choice, and more of them are dying from fentanyl. This fentanyl is not the legally made kind, which is a great drug for pain relief. It’s illicitly made and intentionally marketed as another less-potent drug.
No recovered addict would blame their exposure to a substance for their problems — otherwise they aren’t recovered. So who are all of the addicts doing precisely that? They’re cult members who have been brainwashed into demonizing legal opioids by advocacy groups, rehab interests, and politicians who have been extorting money from drug makers, patients, and taxpayers. There’s an entire industry benefiting from the demonization of a legal drug class that enables millions of people to function every day, and the people in charge are ruthlessly defending their actions. They still claim we need to do more, because there are “too many” lives being lost. They say doctors are still “over prescribing,” even though prescribing has declined for many years and overdoses continue to skyrocket. They ridiculously claim opioids don’t work, and instead of questioning them we have mindless journalists who silently nod their heads in agreement and spread false information. Stating something as ludicrous as “Opioids don’t work,” “Opioids get more people addicted,” or “Opioids drive children into foster care” qualifies as news today. It’s false information. Lies.
Of course, none of the people who failed to learn the lessons of Prohibition intends to advocate banning legal opioids. They know there’s always a chance they or their loved ones will need them. We just learned the President uses Ambien, a drug used recreationally by many — most famously by Tiger Woods. Should he remain President? He and the rest of the people demonizing only the drugs they don’t like, just because they don’t need them, should stop destroying lives and fueling death. Millions are already suffering. Tens of thousands have already died, and it will turn into hundreds of thousands in a few more years if this mass ignorance remains unchallenged.
