Griffin1977 may be referring to the British prison experience, where drugs are more plentiful, and the inmates more awful.
I dispute that there is an awfulness gap. The US may incarcerate a larger percentage of less than awful people than GB, but the awfulness of our most awful inmates should not be so disparaged. After all my particular prison system had a guy that ATE quite a few people. And he didn’t use heroin either.
Yes, doctors should be exercising responsibility in what they’re prescribing, and not prescribing things that are harmful. But where are they getting the information to do that? If a new drug comes onto the market, how do you learn how harmful it is? And if the makers of the drug, the ones who know the most about it, are telling you that it’s safe, how can you contradict that?
I think that part of it might be the attitude of “All drugs are bad”. If everyone (parents, teachers, Very Special Episodes of after-school TV) is telling you that all drugs are bad, and don’t use any of them, it doesn’t matter what it is, and then you discover that, say, marijuana isn’t all that big a deal after all, well, maybe what they’re saying about meth and heroin is just as exaggerated. I think that we should be making more clear to kids that some drugs really are worse than others. That might result in more kids using marijuana, but if it also results in less using the truly nasty stuff, that’s probably a good trade-off.
Withdrawn, then.
Why do you think “legalization encourages it?”
While what you describe does happen, it is also common for legal (though now addicted) opioid users to turn to street drugs as they can’t afford the cost of prescriptions. Which says a lot as to how messed up the US healthcare system is that the insanely marked up illegal drugs are still cheaper.
Overarching “defective society” argument don’t really hold water as the addiction rate has changed so much. Herion use was dropping for many years in the 90s, was the US becoming less defective then? Has US become 600% more defective in the last few years?
The defect is that a lot of white middle class folks who previously were not candidates for opioid abuse were introduced to oxycodone in large numbers by their physicians. Many had their ‘activation’ switch flipped on by this very potent euphoria-inducing drug.
Like a potential diabetic who never would have developed the disease if they’d stuck with their whole grain, low glycemic index diet but sadly got turned onto mashed potatoes and Pepsi by the liter, they now have the active disease.
The new drugs were still opioids. Whatever the drug rep says and the fancy brand name, if you tell to someone to take an opioid regularly and don’t expect they will end being an opioid addict you are not qualified to be a doctor. It is really basic medicine.
True but what evidence is there that switch only exists in “defective” societies? It is pretty much a fundamental physiological fact that if you give someone opioid drugs regularly they will end up addicted.
While all opioids are potentially addicting, some are far more likely to induce an active addiction much more rapidly than others. Those are the highly potent, short acting agents which have been shown to cause a LOT of euphoria. Heroin, Oxycodone, Dilaudid, and fentanyl are good examples of that type. Morphine, hydrocone are similar but not quite as potent for causing that spike of euphoria. Codeine causes less euphoria, and tramadol even less than that.
Methadone causes much less euphoria, but lasts a LOT longer and has unique issues for that and other reasons.
Not that any of the are safe, but some will cause more problems than others.
I consider all human societies to be inherently defective. And in my view, it’s the rise in opioid addiction that’s caused more societal defects, not the reverse. And it’s biology and genetics that results in the potential for addiction, not defective societies. Life stressors certainly can contribute too, but even the best societies have people who are stressed out.
I have also heard that Oxycontine, has made the problem worse due to the fact that patients are only supposed to take it twice a day, but it can wear off in less than 12 hours. That sets up ideal conditions for addiction.
It was often prescribed 3 times a day. But generally lasted 12 hours for most people. And believe me, the problem with it was not that it wasn’t prescribed frequently enough. The average chronic non-malignant pain patient didn’t need it twice a day, much less three times a day. But they sure wanted it more often.
Could marijuana have substituted for opioids in many cases of opioid overprescription? If so, was marijuana considered to represent too great a potential for abuse?
It seems that opioid and meth are the big scourges of lower-middle/working class whites in the US. Are there any links between those two drugs besides being illegal, stupidly dangerous and used by lots of down and out white people? Are they commonly combined in some kind of super speedball?
Regarding marijuana, they’ve already identified over 90 different molecules in it that are active in the brain, all with apparent different characteristics and effects, which have not been clearly defined to any real extent. Shotgunning someone with that many different pharmaceutical-type substances would not be my first choice for someone with malignant pain, or acute traumatic pain. Opioids have been shown to be effective for those types of pain, pot has not.
As for using it for chronic pain, again the issue of what effect which molecule has makes it pretty unscientific, and there’s been little study about possible long-term effects. For all we know, it could, like opioids, actually increase pain over time when used for chronic pain.
A person who would use a drug like heroin for this reason would use pretty much anything, as long as it was available.
In the long run, her death was probably for the best, if you think about it. 
Everyone who’s interested knows who the local or regional doctors are who will write for anything on patient request (this includes things like parents who insist their kids have ADHD even though multiple doctors have said they don’t), and the pharmacies where those prescriptions can be filled, no questions asked.
And everyone involved gets in BIIIIIIG trouble when it catches up with them.
I cannot believe you would say that. Kids like to get high, I know I did (and do to this day). I hope you one day experience the pain her mom went through.
What are the reasons for this dearth of studies? Pot has been used for quite a long time, what’s in the way of such studies? What would it take to get sufficient data on the long-term effects and in what timeframe?
^ I reported my post.