The opioid epidemic - hoppers/thieves

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The reality is that no government, no matter how well conceived and structured, can control a population that wishes to behave a certain way. They have to want to act in positive ways. This is called civilization.
There are many governments that have been able to control a population. It's just that you might not want to live under them. Remember, China got rid of its drug users by having them all executed. Stalin killed more Soviets than Hitler. Mao did a good job against his own people also. Then there's Cambodia and many other civilizations/governments. Most people wanted to flee them not go there.
 
I don't need to be a clinical expert to know the rate of relapse is going to be higher when the root of the addiction isn't cured.

Would you place a bandage over a festering sore without cleaning out the source of the infection?
We are talking about people here. Sons and daughters, who for whatever reason, have been abandoned by everyone, including their parents, the government, etc. the fringe of society. But theyre still sons and daughters. Still humans. If some products that can get them off of the worst junk and on something more regulated, something that is a path, then at least they’re on a path.

Your infection analogy would be to do what they did in the Philippines or wherever it was. And that resulted in extrajudicial killings and a variety of harsh scenarios that we have protections against in the US (and I assume Canada).

And I do think that dealers and pushers should face severe penalties. I also think that junkies if left unchecked should not be allowed to waste health and public safety resources. I don’t care to have to absorb the bill for these people. But we are better than a death sentence in the street, and something to help at least some of them, while undercutting dealers, is a good option.

Maybe the Government should authorize release of free heroin and other drugs to users. I’d think that most folks are smart enough to not use it, and if it ends up on the street it is undercutting the money streams of at least some? I don’t mean Willy-Nilly either. But some way to not expand, but to underxut the revenue stream of drigs to make it largely not worthwhile.
 
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You're right about something going on in China. I was in a McDonalds in Beijing and an old guy came up to our table and flashed us his maimed arm and asked for money. Then we saw a maimed guy playing a stringed instrument begging for money outside the McDonalds. A few days later in another city, I think it was Jinhua, we saw another maimed guy playing the same stringed instrument. We distinctly got the feeling they were part of a bigger something. What that something was we had no idea but it was unsettling.
You mean how there are criminal groups that deliberately maim people so that they get more money when they beg?
 
You mean how there are criminal groups that deliberately maim people so that they get more money when they beg?
When it's n=1, it's disturbing. When it's n=2, you figure, hey, it's my first time in China. Maybe this is how maimed people get by since they can't work and maybe there's no welfare or insurance to help them. When it's n=3, we, as nice people, think that the Chinese send the maimed people to some school or camp to learn to play the instrument to entertain folks and "earn" their panhandle. In the back of our minds there is that thought that they got maimed nefariously but we choose to believe the more wholesome story.
 
This past week, a woman in my county kidnapped her 2 year old daughter (whom she isn't allowed to see per restraining order) and lead police on a high speed chase into the neighboring county. She crashed the car (daughter was okay) and was arrested. They found 332 grams of meth in her trunk.

So someone who is strung out on meth may act irrationally and end up getting arrested, got it.

Although I feel like that was already common knowledge…
 
We are talking about people here. Sons and daughters, who for whatever reason, have been abandoned by everyone, including their parents, the government, etc. the fringe of society. But theyre still sons and daughters. Still humans. If some products that can get them off of the worst junk and on something more regulated, something that is a path, then at least they’re on a path.

Your infection analogy would be to do what they did in the Philippines or wherever it was. And that resulted in extrajudicial killings and a variety of harsh scenarios that we have protections against in the US (and I assume Canada).

And I do think that dealers and pushers should face severe penalties. I also think that junkies if left unchecked should not be allowed to waste health and public safety resources. I don’t care to have to absorb the bill for these people. But we are better than a death sentence in the street, and something to help at least some of them, while undercutting dealers, is a good option.

Maybe the Government should authorize release of free heroin and other drugs to users. I’d think that most folks are smart enough to not use it, and if it ends up on the street it is undercutting the money streams of at least some? I don’t mean Willy-Nilly either. But some way to not expand, but to underxut the revenue stream of drigs to make it largely not worthwhile.
I don't think most have been abandoned. Rather, they've left their families and friends no choice but to cut off contact as a result of their choices and behavior.

Re: Infection analogy: I said that addiction (whether to food, or gambling, or sex, or drugs and alcohol) needs to be treated at the source. I said nothing about the Philippines (someone else said that addicts and dealers have been rounded up and killed there).

To me, treating addiction at the source, rather than putting a bandaid on it (which is what methadone clinics and handing out hypodermic needles does) means an attempt to change a person's lifestyle. That involves a transformation. The pleasure centers in their brain need to be reprogrammed to get happiness from wholesome hobbies and activities and work and exercise, rather than seeking alcohol, drugs, gambling, excess food, or whatever they're hooked on.

In my post on the previous page, another member and I proposed some ideas for how to do that (taxpayer-funded voluntary work/rehab camps that provide an opportunity to work towards getting sober and becoming a productive person through 12-step program, worthwhile work, exiting to a halfway house, working for businesses who would partner with these programs).

BTW, programs like this already exist. I think they need to be expanded, and we need to send social workers out into the homeless community to educate people that there is a way out if they want help.

Again, I'll stress that this needs to be voluntary. No addict is ever going to get clean or sober or stop whatever addictive, destructive behavior they're engaging in unless they themselves WANT to.
 
I had Fentanyl administered intravenously to me during a procedure on my foot. Words do not describe the effects of such a powerful drug had on me. Not only did the pain go away 100% but it was absolutely instantaneous. All of my concerns disappeared as well, I did not have a care in the world. They could have cut my foot off and I would not of cared. That is when I understood how it would be so easy to escape life through Fentanyl. It really scared me. Fortunately I have not chased the dragon since.



Understand though.....


Fentanyl is ONLY used in OR circumstances like 99.99999 % of the time.... It's not even hardly ever used in PACU....


It is not used on the floors typically. Only 1 time EVER did I see a fentanyl drip pca pump on a floor. And then it technically should not have been in my floor.

IV Dilaudid... Yes... Absolutely. Used it many many many times on the floor.

IV morphine.. Yes. Absolutely. Sane as above.

However Not Fentanyl.

That's not standard practice to be used as a regular pain medicine on any regular medical or telemetry floor. Or even ICU.... For that matter.
 
in 25 yrs of work as a Paramedic, I dont recall encountering any homeless person that wanted to get off the streets other than short term for severe weather. There are so many facets to this issue that it will take people WAY smarter than our Government has to solve. I know the first step is to stop Doctors from prescribing happy pills in a lame attempt to solve peoples problems. I saw way too many folks that just floated through the system and the Docs kept prescribing and kicking the can down the road. Ask any pharmacists how bad it is ? drug seekers are a HUGE problem.


You can also thank your/mine lovely govt for this problem with pain medication....


Ohh yes... There were the HCAPS which were set out by mine/your government which set in guidelines of how patient stays should go and how much the hospitals received in reimbursement related to those HCAP scores. . And yes everyone....



Pain management was a big component of those HCAPs. So when people came in for surgery or other types of circumstances... Pain management was chief among the issues to be handled. Therefore the physicians definitely made sure they were plenty of options to manage people's pain level. IV Dilaudid= yeah. PO Percocet = yep. PO Tylenol = yep.

So that was a big, big part of this whole phenomenon starting too.
 
Understand though.....


Fentanyl is ONLY used in OR circumstances like 99.99999 % of the time.... It's not even hardly ever used in PACU....


It is not used on the floors typically. Only 1 time EVER did I see a fentanyl drip pca pump on a floor. And then it technically should not have been in my floor.

IV Dilaudid... Yes... Absolutely. Used it many many many times on the floor.

IV morphine.. Yes. Absolutely. Sane as above.

However Not Fentanyl.

That's not standard practice to be used as a regular pain medicine on any regular medical or telemetry floor. Or even ICU.... For that matter.
Huh?

Medical uses[edit]​

Anesthesia[edit]​

Intravenous fentanyl is often used for anesthesia and to treat pain.[20] To induce anesthesia, it is given with a sedative-hypnotic, like propofol or thiopental, and a muscle relaxant.[21] To maintain anesthesia, inhaled anesthetics and additional fentanyl may be used.[21]These are often given in 15–30 minute intervals throughout procedures such as endoscopy and surgeries and in emergency rooms.[22][23]

For pain relief after surgery, use can decrease the amount of inhalational anesthetic needed for emergence from anesthesia.[21] Balancing this medication and titrating the drug based on expected stimuli and the person's responses can result in stable blood pressure and heart rate throughout a procedure and a faster emergence from anesthesia with minimal pain.[2
 
This is not rocket science...

Fentanyl is used in OR 99.999999 percent of the time.

Hell I never saw used in ICU even.

And the one time we had a PCA pump with iv Fentanyl... that person was very close to passing away.
 
I know not about other schools, but 'the cool' kids in my high school were largely perceived to be the ones most into drugs, but mostly just weed AFAI ever Knew.

I was most certainly not in the cool group.

Kids wanting to be cool, thought drugs and drug use must also be cool, and would make for being cool.
I was rather shocked by exactly who dabbled, and then took it to levels well outside their previous personalities would have dictated.

Years after I graduated, I heard that several of these 'uncool' kids, who so desperately wanted to to be in sitting at the popular cool kid table at lunch, self destructed with drug/alcohol addictions.

How much of our western culture of the Youth, trying to be cool and popular, are responsible for the experimentation that leads the susceptible into addiction?

If this is a factor, how could it be mitigated.?
Teen age rs.
I would hate to be one again,
would hate to be a parent of one, especially while drug use is somehow perceived as being 'cool'.

What I do remember from being that age, was how out of touch the teachers and parents were, as to what was really going on, how the kids were thinking, how good they were at hiding undesirable behavior, and how great they were at lying and deceiving, all the while the parents completely clueless, about how their little angels, were sociopathic demon fiends, when they were in no danger of being observed by a parent/teacher.

I highly doubt that has changed in the subsequent 30 years, and with modern tech, and social media, mordern drugs and Big pharma legally pushing everything the whole news cycle, could be several fold worse.

I think anybody who believes they understand what is going on between kids in high school, should know they are likely completely deluded. The times have changed too much, too quickly to compare one's own experiences at that age, to that of Today's youth.
-------

I've lost a friend to opiates. He got hooked on pain pills after shoulder surgery.
I was 3k miles away and did not know the extent of his addiction, but he succumbed to pneumonia at 33 as it just ravaged his body.
The guy was the picture of health a few years prior. Had things together, goals, was achieving them, then kept dislocating his shoulder and had several unsuccessful rotator cuff surgeries.

RIP BKR.

Last time I saw a doc, he wrote me a scrip for Oxy. I was like 'no thanks', he was like 'take it anyway, just in case you change your mind.'
I tore it up once outside with zero regrets. My Girlfriend at the time was very upset with me when I told her, and I extricated myself from that relationship almost exclusively because of her reaction to me tearing up the oxy scrip, as I finally saw what was underneath, and it was ugly.

She really tore into me, just like those 'cool kids' in high school would do 30 years earlier.

Years later , I ignored that 'friend request' when it came, and recently deleted that whole platform from my life, as self marketing is worse than product marketing, and social insecurity dictates most decisions, usually for the worse.

I don't have answers, but my suspicions are that a large percentage of people who succumb to substance abuse issues, desperately wanted to be in the 'cool and popular' groups in their youth, and drugs were the easy way 'in', and once in, there was no way out.

Their addictive personalities were nurtured/formed at the worst possible time.
 
This is not rocket science...

Fentanyl is used in OR 99.999999 percent of the time.

Hell I never saw used in ICU even.

And the one time we had a PCA pump with iv Fentanyl... that person was very close to passing away.

Yep.

Unfortunately China exports lots of it to Mexico and it then crosses into the USA.
 
Last last years of my career as a fire captain was spent dealing with the effects of the drug epidemic. Doing CPR 5 or 6 times a day. Pushing narcan like it was candy. Fighting with users once the narcan saved them and they comenup off the floor pissed that I had killed their buzz.
In a small town about 40 miles south of the city where I worked and lived that had a population of 398 people here is the number of pain pills that were tracked through the town.
Screenshot_20210829-120350_Chrome.jpg
 
dbias,

Pharmacists at big chain retail stores know they are becoming a Pill Mill..... but they can’t refuse to fill a prescription from a doctor for fear of getting fired. It’s common for Pharmacists fill 400+ prescriptions a day at a busy store. I know one that filled 425 in a 12 hour shift. How many of these were for pain pills ?


At small mom and pop stores owned by the Pharmacist, they only care about the crazy profits.
 
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not sure if this was posted, but here is Portugal's answer: https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/

The reality is that, as has been mentioned, you can certainly "solve" the problem. Execute people who sell drugs, and lock up drug users in prison for 20 years. You won't have much of a drug problem... I don't think the average North American really wants to go down the road of China, though (nor am I recommending it, just to be clear).

The one thing I will say is that "the war on drugs" is over--and drugs won.. We have to look at alternatives. The desire to seek intoxication is as old as mankind, and it's not going anywhere.

I thought that Ontario had been cutting back funding on the safe injection site programs since 2019? Is that actually the case, and could that be a contributing factor?
 
not sure if this was posted, but here is Portugal's answer: https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/

The reality is that, as has been mentioned, you can certainly "solve" the problem. Execute people who sell drugs, and lock up drug users in prison for 20 years. You won't have much of a drug problem... I don't think the average North American really wants to go down the road of China, though (nor am I recommending it, just to be clear).
Yes, we need to be working on solutions that are, well, solutions, not just compassionate appeals to emotion that don't change anything. Keeping people high doesn't seem to be helping, at least not when they are still paying dealers for drugs and then zombi'ing around areas where nobody wants to see them. Theft is rampant, and only getting worse and beautiful downtowns are becoming ghost towns as they get infested with these people.
The one thing I will say is that "the war on drugs" is over--and drugs won.. We have to look at alternatives. The desire to seek intoxication is as old as mankind, and it's not going anywhere.
Absolutely. Just like alcohol won with prohibition.
I thought that Ontario had been cutting back funding on the safe injection site programs since 2019? Is that actually the case, and could that be a contributing factor?
Don't think so? I could be wrong though. I know there was talk about changing how things were being handled with the provincial government talking about treatment/rehab centres located near hospitals, not just the placement of safe injection sites in residential neighbourhoods or downtown. We have more of it than ever and there's some significant conflict over a new safe injection/use site that's supposed to be near the downtown here locally.
 
I know not about other schools, but 'the cool' kids in my high school were largely perceived to be the ones most into drugs, but mostly just weed AFAI ever Knew.

I was most certainly not in the cool group.

Kids wanting to be cool, thought drugs and drug use must also be cool, and would make for being cool.
I was rather shocked by exactly who dabbled, and then took it to levels well outside their previous personalities would have dictated.

Years after I graduated, I heard that several of these 'uncool' kids, who so desperately wanted to to be in sitting at the popular cool kid table at lunch, self destructed with drug/alcohol addictions.

How much of our western culture of the Youth, trying to be cool and popular, are responsible for the experimentation that leads the susceptible into addiction?

If this is a factor, how could it be mitigated.?
Teen age rs.
I would hate to be one again,
would hate to be a parent of one, especially while drug use is somehow perceived as being 'cool'.

What I do remember from being that age, was how out of touch the teachers and parents were, as to what was really going on, how the kids were thinking, how good they were at hiding undesirable behavior, and how great they were at lying and deceiving, all the while the parents completely clueless, about how their little angels, were sociopathic demon fiends, when they were in no danger of being observed by a parent/teacher.

I highly doubt that has changed in the subsequent 30 years, and with modern tech, and social media, mordern drugs and Big pharma legally pushing everything the whole news cycle, could be several fold worse.

I think anybody who believes they understand what is going on between kids in high school, should know they are likely completely deluded. The times have changed too much, too quickly to compare one's own experiences at that age, to that of Today's youth.
-------

I've lost a friend to opiates. He got hooked on pain pills after shoulder surgery.
I was 3k miles away and did not know the extent of his addiction, but he succumbed to pneumonia at 33 as it just ravaged his body.
The guy was the picture of health a few years prior. Had things together, goals, was achieving them, then kept dislocating his shoulder and had several unsuccessful rotator cuff surgeries.

RIP BKR.

Last time I saw a doc, he wrote me a scrip for Oxy. I was like 'no thanks', he was like 'take it anyway, just in case you change your mind.'
I tore it up once outside with zero regrets. My Girlfriend at the time was very upset with me when I told her, and I extricated myself from that relationship almost exclusively because of her reaction to me tearing up the oxy scrip, as I finally saw what was underneath, and it was ugly.

She really tore into me, just like those 'cool kids' in high school would do 30 years earlier.

Years later , I ignored that 'friend request' when it came, and recently deleted that whole platform from my life, as self marketing is worse than product marketing, and social insecurity dictates most decisions, usually for the worse.

I don't have answers, but my suspicions are that a large percentage of people who succumb to substance abuse issues, desperately wanted to be in the 'cool and popular' groups in their youth, and drugs were the easy way 'in', and once in, there was no way out.

Their addictive personalities were nurtured/formed at the worst possible time.

That's like the movie Trainspotting, I'm sorry to hear your story.
 
More than 10 years ago we lost two nephews to the scourge. At the funeral of the youngest, 20 years old, the line of kids showing up for calling hours caused the funeral parlor to extend calling hours more than an hour. Those grieving were from all socioeconomic strata and the feeling that most were using was crushing with the knowledge there was nothing we could say or do for them. Visiting those graves hurts still more than any other.
 
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