How to kill 300,000 Americans - Review

[Goatman]

People need to be aware that some of the people publicizing the "opioid crisis" have an agenda that revolves around either banning them completely or othewise making them unavailable for legitimate medical uses.

...and people need also to be aware that, certainly in the US, the main CAUSE of the current ' crisis' was the medical profession themselves.

But the way in which Britain and the US deal with mass healthcare is so different I think it will be difficult to bring objectivity to bear.

If you are a clinician with personal experience of the issues would you like to review the book ?

 

[Guns]

Thread tidied up. Anymore gun trolling will get ROPs and thread ban. Don’t test me.

 

[Deleted 24582]

I lost my son to the opioid crisis and nothing can bring him back

A pretty good read.

 

[Goatman]

Thread tidied up. Anymore gun trolling will get ROPs and thread ban. Don’t test me.

VMTs

 

[redshift]

Thread tidied up. Anymore gun trolling will get ROPs and thread ban. Don’t test me.

Oh, the irony, coming from a mod named @Guns !

 

[Goatman]

Not necessarily the Doctors. ISTR that prescription drugs come in many forms.

Subscribed by doctors for sale. Sold by patients. Sold by Chemists. Stolen from chemists. Stolen in the supply chain etc etc etc.

Cans of helium for blowing up balloons for example are becoming ever more used in suicides.

The anecdote quoted from the book by Melanie Reid is the vet (Brit usage) who was writing his own prescriptions for fahsands of tabs , using obviously fake names of his patients eg Cha-cha the Chihuahua - and re-selling to addicts at $35 a pill.

The essence of the story is $$$$$$$$$$$$

The interesting thing with fentanyl is the narrow band between ‘therapeutic dose’ and ‘dead’

Yoink - nicked.

Oh, the irony, coming from a mod named @Guns !

Yeah, noted. His guns are 4.5 inch and fire 20 rounds a minute.
" Saturday Night Special Sir?
No thanks, I'm already heeled "

 

[Auld-Yin]

Still no takers for review?

@Goatman looks like it is going to be you, as the instigator, if we don't get a voluntold!

Seriously it is a book that needs a proper look at for the site. Anyone willing PM me, I am happy to post the review anonymously if you are shy.

 

[jarrod248]

Review: Dopesick by Beth Macy — how to kill 300,000 Americans

America is dying of opioid addiction, a pharmaceutical plague as terrible as any medieval one. In rural communities across the land the synthesised poppy holds sway: cheerleaders overdose in school libraries; burly construction workers die in site toilets; farm boys trade their mules for a high; and young parents expire in the front seats of the family car at the shopping mall, needles in their arm, their babies in the back.
Opioid drug overdose rates are climbing: 300,000 Americans have died over the past 15 years and experts predict another 300,000 in the next five. Every hour seven people are dying. Drugs are the leading cause of death for the under fifties, above guns and car accidents.



Full article here:

Recent review by The Times' Melanie Reid, herself a tetraplegic following a riding accident and no stranger to pain relief as practiced here in UK.

Beth Macy's book follows the story of the introduction of the first synthetic opioid << OXYCONTIN>> under a US Government contract awarded to a Big Pharma company called Purdue.
They were given a 17 year monopoly on supply.
The drug became known as ' OXYCOFFIN' amongst users.
Purdue reps told prescribers the addiction rate was 0.5% of users. In reality it was 56 %.
In 2007 Purdue was fined $600M.

Macy quotes one cop as saying:

' Heroin took over from Oxycontin as easily as a light switch going on and off'

Another devastating critique of the issue here How to Kill 300,000 Americans with Opioids | Trey Goff

The last paragraph of The Times' review brings this issue into context for Brits:

' Dopesick is very American It reads like
a CSI script, and it wouldn't surprise me if
it wins a Pulitzer or stimulates a Netflix
series. It's exhausting - the story jumps
around a lot , with too many case studies -
but its also essential. The urgency of its
message is compounded by the fact that
as I write this (August 201 , the latest figures show the
number of deaths in England and Wales
due to the synthetic opioid Fentanyl rose
by 29 per cent in 2017. Carfentanil was
behind another 27 fatalities - the first
time it has been recorded.
Soul-sucking opioids,offering bliss and death, seem unstoppable.'


There are a lot of FOLO folks ( and medical perss) on this board, both British and US. It would be interesting to hear from those with DIRECT experience of the problem.

( That said, this book is not the first exposé of the issue - responses in the form of 'Nothing to see here - move along' whilst anticipated, do little to help. Neither does cheerleading for the former Soviet Union from the usual suspects)

@Auld-Yin I am not qualified to offer a good opinion on this topic, but there are plenty of Arrse lurkers who could do a worthwhile review - any chance of getting a copy ?

Le Chevre

Prescribing in the UK is very much more scrutinised, we don't use very strong opioids for many conditions.
People who should be in addiction clinics in America are I think in pain clincis, it does seem there's a tightening up of prescribing there.

 

[Effendi]

What's the answer? Do you legalise it or continue the war against drugs?

It's all very Darwinian.

It'd be ok if the establishment was not involved in narcotics using it's proceeds to fund illicit activities around and about the planet.

As for Oxy, they call it Hillbilly Heroin. I heard a nice description of the problem some time ago, I can't remember if it was a movie, or a documentary but, basically: 100 years ago upto around 50/60 years ago opium and heroin was ignored, then they introduced controls and ban's. Big pharma, and their forerunners did not want to be losing the huge profits they were making so they 'invented' Oxy, produced some lab documentation, did some testing and stuck it out on the shelf for Dr's to 'prescribe'.

There are organised crime groups who take homeless people to tame Dr's get them 2, 3, 4 or more prescriptions each and then wheel them around a selection of pharmacy's to get the prescriptions filled. The homeless get paid for the day and whichever mafia group is doing the biz gets the pills and get to make $20, or $30 per pill.

It is a problem from the young to the old, rich and poor. We live in an affluent area, Lambo at the end of the road, few porkers and more range rovers than you could wave a stick at. My kid's school has regular drug searches, one happened last week, local plod brng along a sniffer dog and it goes all around the school, including classes being taught sniffing bag's, lockers, desks, kids, cupboards ... everything.

The lad tells me that there are about 5 dealers at the school, we are talking 15/16 year olds, they mainly sell weed. But, there is a culture of kids nicking happy pill's from the stressed out yummy mummy and selling those at aschool too, American Doc's over prescribe, just tell one you are feeling low and you will get a happy tablet prescription.

Quick bit of history: Back in WW2 when the US needed morphine it encouraged farmers in south america to grow opium poppies as the climate there was ideal. At the end of WW2 the US govt said, "thank you for your service to the US and goodbye". Overnight the farmers were making zilch, so they started growing coke plants and shipping that up to the US to continue earning some money. So look who started the problem.

Weed as it is known and grown in central america can be loosely attributed to the Lebanese. Back in the days of the shooty war in Lebanon in the 70's and 80's the blokes growing the stuff over there had enough of being variously shot at, extorted and threatened either by Yasser's lot, Hezbollah, the Christian Falangists and the Israelis thrown in for good measure. They upped and emigrated to various parts of central america, where they bought 'coffee plantations' and swathes of land and set up the family business there. There used to be some Leb's in Belize and I know of one Brit/Lebanese squaddie's family that had 'coffee interests' in Nicaragua.

 

[Auld-Yin]

The review of this book has now been done by @Themanwho and is up on the reviews site.

https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/r...-the-drug-company-that-addicted-america.1003/

An excellent review which deals with how the author approached the subject.

 

[redshift]

A friend of mine, who was in dental school in my uni, very bright. I moved away during his final years as I had graduated. He went for opiates and pills, graduated to heroin and lost his arm from an overdose.

He now runs a rehab and prevention program. It's still shocking to me. He was one of the brightest guys I knew in school. Drugs and alcohol, if you lose control of them do some crazy shit to people.

I am only posting this as he wants people to know, he is out in the open.

Ziyad Elassal - Difference Makers

His personal story starts at 3:48 in the video.

 

[redshift]

From my neck of the woods...and frankly knowing Bloomfield and Birmingham areas, I am not surprised.

Six Detroit area doctors indicted in $500M health care fraud

Very rich areas with plenty of legal pill popping customers. Still....half a billion dollars worth of fraud...

 

[Bollox]

Not necessarily the Doctors. ISTR that prescription drugs come in many forms.

Subscribed by doctors for sale. Sold by patients. Sold by Chemists. Stolen from chemists. Stolen in the supply chain etc etc etc.

People will always service a need. It wasn’t too long ago when people in the U.K. were getting smashed if their tits on readily available legal stuff due to the minimal risk of being caught with it.

Cans of helium for blowing up balloons for example are becoming ever more used in suicides.

They are now adding oxygen to the balloon helium cans to prevent their use in suicides. If you want to kill yourself with helium you need to buy the pure stuff available from commercial gas suppliers.

 

[Lardbeast]

They are now adding oxygen to the balloon helium cans to prevent their use in suicides. If you want to kill yourself with helium you need to buy the pure stuff available from commercial gas suppliers.

Cool. Means there's less chance of falling over while doing the humorous squeaky voices.

 

[Cutaway]

They are now adding oxygen to the balloon helium cans to prevent their use in suicides. If you want to kill yourself with helium you need to buy the pure stuff available from commercial gas suppliers.

They've been doing the same to the containers of hydrogen.
The mix is now sold in small plastic bottles labelled, "Evian."

 

[Joe Roberts]

Strange thing, Oxycontin and Oxycodone sound very much like Eukodal, an opiate which was very popular in 1920's Germany during the Weimar Republic. The reason for its popularity seems to have been a wish to escape what was often a depressing reality, and, of course, there were war veterans who'd suffered terrible wounds who probably used it as well. I've read there's not very much difference between Eukodal and Oxycontin or Oxycodone.

It seems Theodor Morell, the quack who was Hitler's favourite doctor, lit him and most in his inner circle up with Eukodal and various other opiates more or less at their own request. From the end of 1942 to the end of the war, Hitler, and many of his top people seem to have been living in cloud cuckoo land. As Cocaine (and Pervitin, a trade name for crystal meth) were also readily available, the depths of unreality they reached must have been quite something.

This is well worth a read too: A fresh light on the Nazis' wartime drug addiction | DW | 19.10.2016 (English title, "Blitzed.")

 

[Goatman]

Just to give an impression of the scale of the problem in U.S

Feds make biggest-ever fentanyl bust at the border

One 38 ton articulated lorry = $4M of illegal highly toxic dream powders.....

I hope this is one of the memos the staffers keep off that desk in the Oval Office....

 

[Goatman]

Jihadis? pah....Fundamentalist gun nuts?...P'Tui


An up to date in-depth briefing on the scale of the Opioid addiction crisis in USA from The Economist:

[Extract reproduced by kind permission Miss Rita Chevrolet]

Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from opioid overdoses


"....Drugs now kill about 70,000 Americans every year—more than car crashes or guns (both 39,000), more than AIDS did at the height of its epidemic (42,000), and more than all the American soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam war (58,000).

In 2017 about 47,600 of those deaths were caused by opioid overdose—a fivefold increase since 2000. Only 32% of those opioid deaths involved prescription pills; the rest were from illegal heroin and fentanyl (see chart 1). But three out of four heroin users first became addicted to pills. "

Should cross-post this to the thread on the Next Big Health Killer

 

[Goatman]

Update, worth a watch

All this is happening while Trump grandstands about Iran or some other damn thing

 

[endure]

Update, worth a watch

All this is happening while Trump grandstands about Iran or some other damn thing

Meh. There are wars to be fought, lives to be wasted and money to be made!