If you were a child of the 1980s and saw what crack/cocaine did to the generation of those who came up before you, you could only see it as the embodiment of the Devil.
37
Legalize all drugs. Destigmatize drug recreation. Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence assert an inalienable right to pursue happiness? Not everyone can afford a yacht or skydiving vacations. Drugs stimulate the same pleasure centers involved in orgasm. Why must our puritanical society begrudge the poor some enjoyment in life, some escape from stinking capitalism? We spend an awful lot of money regulating drugs. The DEA, ICE, the FDA, our criminal justice system, ruined lives from having a criminal record which impacts our GDP, steady erosion of our Bill of Rights. Prohibition funds terrorist organizations and criminal cartels, make our ports porous, promotes overdoses because of the lack of quality and dosage information. It’s a failed approach. Half the doctor’s visits in this country are to get a refill. Regulation is being misused at every level to prop up special interest incomes. Even at death’s door:
https://khn.org/news/no-one-is-coming-hospice-patients-abandoned-at-deat...
If you’re dying of a terminal disease and in agonizing pain, why should you need a prescription to obtain morphine from the local pharmacy? The War on Drugs has caused too much collateral damage. But a police state always wants to have its subjects “by the balls”.
72
Some commenters suggest legalizing cocaine. Hm, terrible idea I have to say.
If we really wanted to nail down into the heart of the matter, we would invest more in education and the social safety net so that fewer people sought drugs in the first place, and would drastically expand access to affordable treatment.
28
I recommend this article -
- "Treating Addicts With Psychedelics" - Scientific American - scientificamerican.com - Jan. 1, 2017
This article describes how ibogaine, a schedule 1 illegal plant drug, has been used to reduced craving for addictive drugs, including cocaine.
In shamanic rituals, participants report that ibogaine often triggers hallucinations which provide insight regarding pivotal life events, and drug craving may be quickly reduced.
However, to prevent relapse, addicted participants need further therapy to help change negative attitudes and life patterns.
Unfortunately, ibogaine can have dangerous side effects, including heart attacks and seizures.
There is a descriptions of ibogaine's very unusual chemical structure.
Savant HWP, a pharmaceitical company in California, has developed a drug called 18-MC, which is chemically related to ibogaine, but is not hallucinogenic.
When 18-MC was given to lab rats, which had been trained to self-seek addictive substances, the addictive behavior was often significantly reduced.
In 2014, phase I trials of 18-MC in Brazil on healthy volunteers showed that "there were no serious adverse effects", although it was "much more potent than we were expecting."
Further trials of 18-MC began in the U.S. in 2017.
If only federal government officials would support this type of careful research, instead of going totally ballistic about any substance remotely related to visionary or expanded consciousness experiences.
21
Prohibition doesn't work. If you actually removed one drug as an issue (which you won't = can't) then another one will take it's place. It's a cultural one, but in truth human beings will always try to dull or expand their consciousness.
24
We point the finger of blame at the producers and sellers of these drugs, we assert that the addicts are both victims and suffering from a disease. At the same time demand for these drugs is growing and we still do not understand the biochemistry of substance abuse/addiction.
We still look at and treat addiction as a moral-failure on the part of the addicted. We don't understand why the percentage of the population that becomes addicted remains the same despite the increasing availability of drugs. We like to think that we understand the root-cause but we don't.
It is past time to fund some real scientific research into the root-causes and not assume the same beliefs popular in the 18th century.
Shaming people into self-hatred and then trying to get them to remake themselves isn't working. There is something at the biochemical level that we simply do not understand and until we do this problem will continue.
No other disease is treated with a 12-step program today.
22
The cure is not removing substances. There is always something to reach for that dulls the stress response.
Just ask Betty Ford. What did she turn to after removing the tempting liquor from her reach? Rubbing alcohol?
Thank Betty Ford for her vulnerability (a leadership quality -takes courage to get real). Use her story to see the big picture.
Substance use is a coping mechanism to deal with a stressful environment. Sure, it becomes a habit, one that defies will if one has no sense of belonging in the world. So are eating disorders, including anorexia. Can't really take away from an anorexic can you?
The answer is cultural. We've gone off the deep end with our lower nature.
Greed is an addiction, too.
Billionaires have an addiction too. Yeah, even Warren Buffet. He isn't winning, he's hoarding. So is the Catholic Church. How about your church?
The cure isn't a mystery. We can create a pro social culture thru character development.
We do that by building resilience.
Paranoid men are never going to create a prosocial culture. Ever.
Luckily, we don't need to pass a bill, fund a grant, do research or train people. The work is done.
Just ask the 1000's of San Francisco State grads trained over the last 30 years in a peer based story telling practice to show up at coffee shops to start community service learning circles.
SFSU? a diverse, innovative campus, full of 1st generation college students.
Do you get it yet? They really do matter!
Ask. They can create the movement you seek.
30
Do not politicize this, racist from both sides will use this against the other. White racist will say people who use an illegal drug like cocaine do not deserve societies help. Black racist will say the opioid crisis is only a crisis because it effects whites.
10
Mr. Frakt might like to know that the New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article on another drug problem entitled "Our Other Prescription Drug Problem" which is about the overprescription of benzodiazepines which are involved in over 30% of opioid overdoses.
I'd like to know why The Times hasn't considered this to be much of a problem. Even when it reported the results of the autopsies on Prince and Tom Petty, both of whom were using opioids and benzos, it only focused on the opioids and didn't even mention the role the benzos may have played in their deaths. And it seems both were receiving their benzos and many of their opioids via physician prescriptions and not illicitly.
30
The cure for any vice/dangerous object is legality, responsibility, regulation and non promotion.
We worked wonders with cig. smoking and have failed miserably with our national gun death carnage by not fully implementing the cure.
With dangerous drugs like cocaine, with legality I mean basically outlawing them but giving them to addicts who are about to commit crimes.
One of the key things like with cig. smoking, guns, prostitution is to keep them legal subject to regulation, responsibility and non promotion.
6
Pain, in all its forms, seems endemic. Opioids are freely administered and abused, yet legal marijuana is considered dangerous at the federal level. If we have endemic pain, and a means of treating it, why is our most available choice our deadliest? The most virulent critics of pot are tobacco staters, supporters of a habit where it’s deadly , addictive affects are normalized . Slavery and its mentality is woven into this crisis.
6
The idea that we can end this opioid crisis by attacking the drug manufacturers needs to be checked against the Constitution.
A decision on such legal assaults needs to be sent to the Supreme Court so that we don't have one of these witch hunts every generation just to keep the legal fraternity in Bentleys.
A cheaper version of this theme could be our handing out free painkillers to people in the same idea of handing out free syringes in urban areas in the past. The cost would be minimal.
A free supply of what people are already addicted to would keep them from going broke buying meds illegally at fifty times the legal cost and then going to the ten-dollar syringe that will end their lives.
6
Free supply of something that put in danger human health and life? Amazing!
There is no possible safe use of cocaine at all...
14
I actually meant the prescription-strength opiates. The world doesn't see cocaine as a pain medication. Heroin - like all opiates - is a very addictive pain medication.
Are overdose deaths related to unsafe use of the substance? If alcohol were illegal, how many people would die from adulterated liquor? How many people would die if the substance were legal and safely administered? Is the NYTimes advocating another 50 years of war on drugs? No alternatives?
9
Why not focus on making life less awful so that drugs are not as appealing?
77
Supply and demand. As long as there is strong demand, someone will supply the product. The long-term solution is to reduce demand for illicit drugs. That requires implementation of effective school programs, much more than the useless sop DARE program, and those programs require time and money for teacher training and materials. Prevention programs need to start in 5th grade, use DARE if you want, and then continue age appropriate at least every odd year. There are several such programs. However, the GOP slashed funds for school prevention programs in 2011 and never put them back. Mr. Trump's budget cuts those funds even further.
8
This is so true. People often wonder why there are so many liquor stores in poor neighborhoods. It's supply following demand. The bakers, chocolatiers and small produce-driven grocers open and then close shop because the locals won't spend their money there. They would rather have cigarettes, booze and drugs. Until you change that, you don't solve anything. And can we also talk about how the surge in drug use closely matches the surge in homelessness? Everyone wants to make that issue about the cost of rents. But people have family & friends to go to when the rents are too high. It's the addicts who shift their money from bills to drugs that end up on the streets since their families & friends are far less inclined to take them in.
18
You talk about these neighborhoods as if there is actual choice involved. Bakers, chocolatiers and small produce driven grocers are targeting sales to people who can afford luxuries that are not psychoactive. People in poor neighborhoods have a lot more they are trying to escape, ignore or numb away from, and chocolate isn't gonna help enough. Try living with absolutely no hope, and very little income in a completely devastated and destroyed neighborhood, and then see if you chose fresh kale, or if you chose alcohol and other drugs. The actual answer is a truly equal society with an abundance of connection and caretaking for all.
3
I’ve observed that the local police like the DARE program despite its ineffectiveness. They get paid overtime to make presentations when they are off duty.
28
Why the emphasis on African Americans? Aren't we all Americans and human too?
11
If we look at top non-pot drugs of choice, coke and its derivatives seem to be affecting the Af-Am communities what the various opioids are doing to the Anglo comm unites. The difference may be that the latter has received far more coverage as the former.
11
I'm sure it's driven at the Federal level, where obtaining grant money is likely tied to the researcher showing how his study will serve at risk populations (blacks). But you're right - drug use is unfortunately ubiquitous and race should not be discussed unless it truly is the driving factor.
11