First and foremost, are they the DEA, POTUS and other leaders whom are not allowing the doctors to do their job and treat patients whom some have been treating the same patients for years. Why do real pain suffers have to pay the price of addicts. This is so unfair to tell patients to put the gun to your temple and just pull the trigger, and please do not tell me anything different if you have not walked a mile in my shoes. When you have to depend on opiates just to get out of bed and plan your day then ok. I am so tired of this government controlling every aspect of our lives. Some need to see the statistics of those whom already paid the price for this war on opiates whom have committed suicide because they no longer receive their meds, or its been drastically cut. Thank you very much opiate addicts, good job..
3
Statistics indicate the vast majority of opiod addicts became adicted from legally manufactured in the US and legally prescribed and dispensed in the US.
Who does he plan to execute? The CEO of Merck? Smith-Glaxo? Walgreens?Give me a break.
3
Iran & China both have the death penalty & both have a huge drug problem. Execution is no answer if it were we would have no murders, no serial killers, no bombers, & anyway often innocent people are executed which is why most civilized countries ban it.
So if making guns illegal will stop gun violence then making heroin illegal will stop addicts and overdosing. Not working is it. Both problems are education and mental health issues. You need to fix the cause to curtail the problem (or at least is greatly diminish it).
Mr. Trump has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers. Trump, I take it, believes corporations are people. Corporations are capable of criminal liability. Moreover, Officers and Directors can be criminally liable for a corporation's criminal acts.
Does Mr. Trump propose killing the drug dealing corporations by revoking the corporate charter and seizing all the corporation's assets? If that was his idea of a death penalty, that may not be such a bad idea.
Would the Officers and Directors be exposed to the death penalty?
1
The "War On Drugs" has always been doomed to failure from its inception, because it attempts to circumvent one of the oldest laws of economics known to man. And that is, when there is a demand, there will always be a supply, legal or not. That is the real challenge, to make people not want it. Good luck there.
PS: The death penalty has never proven to be a deterrent for murder one. It certainly won't slow down any drug dealers.
I find this epidemic very frightening, so this editorial helps me gain a reasonable perspective.
It would be interesting to hold a competition at the proposed border wall prototypes, rewarding those who can defeat the wall's barriers in short order.
Obviously, unless the walls are anchored in bedrock, tunneling under is easy enough.
But, given a certain above ground height, exactly how hard is it to supersede 30 - 40 feet heights, or such, in the outback regions.
My guess is height is easily surmounted.
It would seem to me money spent on an ineffectual wall might be better spent in the heath care system.
5
The rhetoric fires up his base. Hence, the opioid strategy "works".
4
The Anti-abortion GOP want to cut medicaid - in other words, GOP believes you should bring a child into the world if you can't afford it, and they won't help you keep that kid alive with Medicaid!!! How hypocritical is that??? Gotta birth them, then let them die due to lack of medical coverage. LOL, these folks are not rational.
7
Either you guys are taking opioids or you miss the point that drug dealers should be dealt with harshly.
I would be interested in meeting you to find out how much experience you have working with people with addiction issues. More people die of alcohol-related problems than will ever die of opioid overdose. But I would comfortably wager that you think alcohol is just fine. Should we put bartenders & liquor store owners behind bars?
The vast majority of opioid users can live normal productive lives with medication assisted treatment (primarily Suboxone but for some opioid addicted individuals methadone is the better drug). We have had decades of dealing with drug-addicted people in a punitive way. What good has that done? Drug addiction is more prevalent than ever. Why not spend money to increase treatment availability? Make medications less expensive? Wait, that would make WAY too much sense. Let's do it the Trump way. Because everything else he's recommended has worked SO well.
1
Tough anti-drug laws have been successful in Singapore although full data has not been publicly available. You do not see used needles or passed out addicts on the streets of Singapore. ODs are super rare. Singapore has death penalty for drug trafficking and very low number of drug offenses in their public schools and very high student performance in the same schools regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic status. May be we should try their ways as they seem to work just fine for Singaporeans.
Mr. Trump, as usual, has blamed the easy target, Mexico, "lax" borders and drug dealers. Instead, we need to be looking at our values. Heroin and other opioids have been around a long time, but were never the scourge that they now are. As a retired addictions counselor who was nationally certified, I believe that drugs have become more socially acceptable in many parts of society. No one believes they will become addicted. It will happen only to someone else. "I'm just having a little fun," or "escaping the real world" for a little while.
Prevention needs to start at home, with parents setting good examples, talking about why illegal and illicit drugs are dangerous and supervising their children. We need many more qualified treatment centers. We need better interdiction. We don't need to execute anyone.
We also need to be aware that drug use goes in cycles. Many are already moving on to methamphetamines. After that, look for cocaine to make a comeback. What are we doing to address the cycle of drugs? Very little that I know of.
While we address opioids, we need to be working to stem the tide of the next big thing.
4
So are we to expect the death penalty for the pharma companies that pushed the opoids that started this epidemic?
6
So, if President Trump wants to impose the death penalty on drug dealers, I'm curious to know what his position is on gun dealers who sell the weapons that are used in killings.
11
As usual, Trump’s solutions are themselves worse problems...he being the worst problem.
5
I have asked several of your reporters and left messages for the paper asking if you know which newspaper gave Cambridge Analytica their subscribers' data to analyze. Why can't you guys get back to me? Seriously, you are giving me a heart attack.
I assume it's the WSJ as Murdoch is as enamored with Putin as Trump, but why can't you deny this? It's really fizzing me off. At least CNBC is willing to admit this is part of CA's dark art. Come on, help a subscriber out.
2
Why even bother to come up with an editorial response on his proclamations? We all realize by now they don't amount to much, that he pretty much talks out of his back end.
4
Deja Vu! Just say no and everything will be okay. Republicans and Democrats leaders have failed this country ; when it comes down to helping those in need when it comes to addiction, it is way easier to point fingers to the victims. Now they are vilifying the doctors and patients.
The USA has spend Billions, if not Trillions on the war on drugs since the days of Nancy Reagan crry,"just say no".
Instead of educating and helping we classified people.
1
Clamping down on prescriptions won't work if heroin has become cheap as dirt, and keeps flooding into this country. One OxyContin tablet costs about $80 on the street. For that amount you could probably buy enough smack to kill a horse. It may be true that a lot of current heroin addicts started on prescription pills, and when the doctor cut them off, they turned to junk.
15
Afghanistan is the top producing opium country in the world by far. How is the US going to control the epidemic at home by force if its military can't even stop production at the source with billions of dollars in NATO's army and economic aid.
4
"The administration would seek to reduce opioid prescriptions" is a good idea? Really. Because we've seen how well politicians legislate medicine. My daughter has been battling cancer in constant pain for six years. Getting her pain medications is already absurdly complicated. Pharmacists balk at filling her prescriptions for absurd reasons. Only at the hospital is she confident that she'll be able to fill them. Neither the white house nor Congress should be interfering with physicians' practices.
4
More death! More guns! More incarceration! More punishment!
"Yay, he's dead!" Trump tweets today about a serial bomber in Austin.
We need to evolve or there is no hope for us.
12
Trump is a narcissist, a sociopath and a sadist.
There is no indication in his background to suggest that he cares about the victims.
Rather, it looks to me like he likes the idea of executions -- something he seems to admire about Duterte. Stated another way, every crisis is an opportunity for Trump to meet his emotional needs.
9
The worst drug dealers who are causing so much death, destruction, and cost to society, are easily found on the financial pages of this newspaper.
2
"Take this pill and call me in the morning."
1
I applaud the Time's Editorial Board for breathing new life into an old word: 'cockamamie'.
With Trump in office, I expect to see a resurgence of the use of the word.
8
I do not know if Trump has any care for the addicted in this country. People become addicted to all sorts of things that have the potential to ruin their lives and we need to be paying attention to all of them.
Trump's use of a Mexican border wall, trashing immigrants and calling for the death penalty in this situation is a purely political ploy that denigrates the suffering of those actually addicted. We need a president in the White House who actually presents solid plans and solutions rather than a buffoon who plays every situation into one for his own advantage.
17
This buffoon proposes the death penalty and a wall as a way to address the drug epidemic. How quick we are to forget. This is the same nitwit that proposed Rep Tom Marino as drug czar a few months ago. At the same time Marino was exposed as a shill for the drug companies and had to withdraw. Trumps war on drugs is about as honest as his heel spurs. A phony and a coward to the core.
4
Donald Trump encourages America to kill drug dealers. For many reasons, this will not happen. The result? Donald Trump will claim he tried to rid America of the scourge of addiction but those pesky Democrats blocked all his magnificent, brave efforts. Donald wins again. All talk, no action, no leadership and another victory.
3
You know who else was championing death to drug dealers? The current president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who promotes the extrajudicial killings on city streets of people "suspected" of being drug dealers. Wrap your mind around that--12,000 killings not because a jury or judge found them guilty and sentenced them to death but because someone took it upon themselves to label them drug dealer and then gunned them down.
Given Trump's friendly relations with Duterte, I am not surprised he's copied Duterte's macho "tough on drugs" stance. And thus we bring America even closer to the danger of becoming a fascist state.
3
talk is cheap - so is trump
4
I do not consider execution of gun dealers preposterous. These guys are murderers and execution may be the only way to stop them. Not all gun dealers, just the ones who act outside of the law, Perhaps the same task force could control guns and opioids. We legitimately need some drugs, and some guns out there, but there is an epidemic going on.
3
Really Robert? Execution of gun dealers and drug dealers....... they are guilty of a crime of commerce- not of violence. Since most guns sales are now legal - gun shows, etc... and most opioid problems are from prescribed opioids who are you know killing?
While we're on the subject of vices, should we execute tobacco execs too? How about alcohol execs? Far, far greater damage from either of those two vices than from opioids.
1
Oh no you don't, that' pot's comeback story. Opiods are not good for living things unless they are just coming out of surgery. Opiods are a disaster begging to happen.
To the parents of children who died of heroin/ fentynel use. Are they aware that in many cases their children sold drugs (became drug dealers)) to help afford their drug habit?
2
Arguably the worst president in American history makes the worst recommendations for dealing with the opioid epidemic. What works is hard and costly...medically assisted treatment, therapy and extended and strong support. Walls don’t stop drugs...good treatment and a commitment to sobriety does.
3
The surge in drug use and drug related deaths has complex roots. Trump is last person who will help solve a problem of such complexity. He most likely will make it worse by using it as a pretext to blame people of color and undocumented immigrants and cutting essential benefits like Medicaid.
1
Mr. Trump is not good at finding workable solutions to tough problems. He is good at throwing lots of money at problems via bad solutions: " ... spending a lot of money on great commercials showing how bad [the drug crisis] is ...", a big, beautiful wall along the Mexican border, etc. Looking tough is apparently more important than actually solving problems.
Why is trump so soft on opioid crisis I wonder ?
For him a person who does not drink or do drugs if that is correct why not take a full measure ?
2
Unfortunately, the President holds onto many ideas that are old and have never worked. His mantra seems to be the force and bullying is the way to control situations that he cannot resolve. He seems to think that tough talk is enough to scare problems away. The death penalty is just another wall someone else will pay for. Meanwhile, in our little town in New Hampshire, two people have died of overdoes, a few have been revived more than once with NARCAN, and a guy passed out while driving and ended up in the middle of a basketball court where kids were playing. We need to treat addiction like a disease and put our resources into treatment not walls.
1
The administration’s focus seems to be on everything except better treatment. Increasing jail sentences won’t help people to get better. In fact, we know that drugs are plentiful in prison and dealers can continue to profit so jail cannot replace treatment. A new drug dealer will quickly replace each one that police take off the streets. We have to decrease the demand for opioids by helping our citizens. We must focus on changing our ineffective and outdated treatment centers and improving access to individualized medical treatment. Opioid dependence is a medical issue and not a moral one. Once patients are safely detoxed in a hospital with less discomfort, they are more likely to work on any underlying emotional issues that might have contributed to an addiction. Let’s change our views to better fit the needs of society so everyone can have access to effective treatment.
1
It isn't just opoids. My friend got "hooked" on Valium and Ativan when her husband shared his pills with her. Attempts to have her go "cold tukey" failed.
What was intended to be a "short term" prescription ended up being a 20 year-long nightmare, leading to her death by overdose.
2
The addiction starts with a physician's prescription, not with "illegals" or open borders. Once more, like the gun debate, the choice of Donald Trump is to put a lid on the boiling pot rather than putting out the flame.
The Times has "evidence"?
Maybe you missed it. Trump and the entire GOP he commands are explicitly against the very idea of evidence. They don't collect it. They don't believe it when it's in front of them. They reject it if it says something they dislike, AS A POLICY, because for forty years they've behaved as they want to, regardless of evidence before or after the fact. Their aim isn't effectiveness in government. Their aim is to take what they want and dump the effects, costs, and casualties of their looting on helpless people.
If the Editorial Board needs all this explained, walk over to the Alternative Reality Bureau right in your building. David Brooks and Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens can walk you through the Principles of Doublethink as they're refining them under your banner every day. Just a heads up: the word "evidence" won't be in the PowerPoint.
3
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
WRONG! He cares nothing about people suffering from addiction. They only way he would is if somehow it addiction was monetized and he, or his crime family, could make a buck off of it.
1
My comment turned the readers of NYT into a Town Hall Meeting.That is good. Thank you readers for offering your opinions.
Medical Schools and Nursing Schools have been teaching in their schools that aggressively treating pain after surgery promoted easier breathing and faster recovery. It seems to me that this philosophy may be creating new drug addicts, and needs revision.
Blaming physicians for overprescribing pain medications is justified. The busy physician gives in to the patient’s request for more and more pain medication. He/She is the first person in stopping the chain of events that lead to drug addiction. A stiff admonition from the surgeon general of the US and from the CDC, and revision of medical and nursing school education of pain management, should help.
Drug pushers are in a different category. Their activity is criminal in intent from the beginning. They need to be handled firmly. A third conviction should be punished with execution.
1
I very much want to comment on the fantastic achievement of the Culture and Design Team in the Arts Department. Looking closely at Bowie's costumes gives me a real thrill I never knew before Amber Butchart taught me how hard it is to sew such things for kings, queens and their underlings. Her team can recreate anything. We can all be heroes if we are willing to shed a little blood for it.
1
The war on drugs is a war on Black and Latino men. No more, no less. That's why Sessions is such a big fan.
These programs and the laws that support them provide invasive police powers, powers that have never been executed evenhandedly. Police routinely 'stop and frisk' and 'knock and enter' and engage in no-knock entry in poorer neighborhoods because they know that residents don't have the financial power or legal representation to do anything about it.
As a result, more poor people (it happens to poor white people as well, but not to the same extent) are locked up for minor drug crimes, and more lives are ruined (and more voting rights abrogated). This may not be the only reason for perpetuation of the cycle of poverty, but it's not helping.
The reason we have drug problems is the lack of opportunity, first in the inner cities and now in the countryside. People need a purpose. Thus, the only way to stop drugs is treatment coupled with real opportunity.
2
And in the meantime, marijuana becomes legal in more states, its a profitable business, while many black and latino men are doing life for selling weed. You have to be kidding me. How that heck is this fair. Its ok to make billions of dollars, and its also OK to keep minorities locked away in prisons for having it on their possession or selling it.
So we'll now be executing Opioid Drug Manufacturers,
Medical Doctors, and Pharmacists...since they're the real
quote "Drug Dealers".
A prescription has to be written, then filled by a pharmacy,
so whose the dealer?
6
It was Mr. Trump playing his greatest “law and order” hits — as usual, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
That statement sums up most of Trump's life and his current job. For a self proclaimed successful businessman he seems to go out of his way to make preposterous statements that are counterproductive and produce no results. But he isn't the first person and won't be the last to fail to address the problems of the country he leads. Other presidents have failed as well. So have business leaders, some of whom were paid large sums of money for their failures.
Part of the problem in America is that we refuse to elect and empower representatives who will work to solve various problems. We forget that a country cannot be run like a business. Countries have to work for their citizens and residents rather than against them to the point where people start to actively sabotage them. In America, it's our politicians who are working against our interests and not being held accountable. Much recent legislation has been set up to benefit the richest with sops tossed in to quiet the rest of us.
Our current crop of senators and representatives in DC need to be cut off from t their government issued checks and forced to live the way they expect us to live. I'd like to see them stay off the alcohol and drugs they way they expect us to. I'd also enjoy watching them deal with an unresponsive government. It's enough to make you deal or take opioids to kill the pain.
2
I’m so glad that Trump has found such an elegant, simple solution to the opioid crisis: I’d expect nothing less. Let us identify the dealers of these addictive drugs and execute them! Since most of them work for large Pharma companies they should be easy to find. Don’t stop until the blood of the kingpins in their corner offices flows through corporate headquarters! They pushed this scourge upon the suffering, they hooked a nation, now they must pay!
3
It's too late to start with the Sacklers, I suppose...
If Trump starts executing "Drug Dealers" in this country we are going to end up with a serious Doctor shortage.
5
I do not think execution of drug dealers will come about. However, it is encouraging to see that we have a president who is actually against drugs. He might get results.
1
First he says he can get away with shooting someone in the street, now he is ready to do it. Who will he want to shoot next?
4
Why are we so punitive in our response to things like drug epidemics.? It's not just President Trump, but our history with three strikes, you're out, taking away any educational or training benefits from prisoners who might like to turn their lives around, punishing ex-cons by not allowing them to vote and making it difficult for them to obtain jobs! We spent years on the war on drugs only to increase its effects. When will we turn to helping our citizens who have drug addictions to get the help they need? Why do we punish them by not making available to all the treatment that works? How have we let this problem grow? Our indifference to those in need!
33
I think that Purdue Pharma's executives should be severely punished for what they helped to create. Their actions made it very difficult for people who need real pain relief to obtain it. Oxycontin is highly addictive. Codeine, not as much. But Purdue Pharma lied in order to make money. And they continued lying for the same reason.
This is like the tobacco industry which lied about the addictive effects of nicotine while the executives almost never smoked. Or the asbestos industry which knew that the fibers were causing lung cancer and said nothing. There is a long and rich history of industrial lying in America. There is an equally long history of fighting to keep the truth hidden, hurt employees and consumers in these industries, and no real day of reckoning.
Why aren't these liars and cheats given the same perp walk we demand of child molesters, robbers, and others who create havoc in the community?
2
Typical of Trump, no solution was offered in the New Hampshire "speech". More people have died from opioid addiction than the AIDS epidemic. It ought to be treated as the epidemic it is. To execute "drug dealers" would mean to execute the many doctors and the Pharma industry salespeople who promoted these drugs for years, and claimed they were not addictive. It wasn't until recently we started to track patients who would see multiple physicians and receive multiple prescriptions for opioids. These addicts need treatment, AND alternative treatments for their pain; such as PT, losing weight, exercise, and alternative pain treatments. These need funding. We don't need any more empty bluster from a fake POTUS.
1
Thanks for using "cockamamie" and "preposterous" in this piece. Those are good words that don't get their fair share of use. I guess that's one positive thing that can be said about this president. He's made words like these fashionable again.
3
Trump was campaigning at his invitation-only event in NH. The opioid crisis was just a prop to get a free pass on using taxpayer money instead of campaign funds for a trip to Manchester.
3
After years of not owning a TV, I am shocked when I go to my family’s house and see that every other commercial is for pharmaceuticals. It’s SO CRAZY, but now it’s the norm. No wonder our citizens have a drug problem. Removing these commercials from television seems like an easy way to improve the problem. Also, I don’t believe in the death penalty. Isn’t that going back to the violent mentality of the Middle Ages? (And it’s not proven to help anyway.)
2
One of the "good ideas" cited here is to reduce the number of opioid prescriptions. The problem with this idea is who and what type of cases will be the target of the reduction strategy.
There is however a much more effective way of prescribing opioids without it resulting in the patient experiencing an opioid high and therefore continuing to seek out that high after the prescription expires, which is at the heart of the whole opioid epidemic and its main cause.
And that is to prescribe the opioids in extended release form, the most ideal way being a patch. And this is because since the opioid is released in only very small amounts at a time the user does not experience any high from the opioids. I know this from 1st hand experience, something that most doctors and policy makers do not since this can only be learned from experiencing the difference.
So when faced with the option of prescribing immediate release pills which provide the user with an opioid high, which is no different than giving them some other drug such as cocaine for 2 weeks which they were learn to enjoy, as opposed to prescribing extended release which do not provide a high at all, prescribing extended release is a no brainer..
In fact the only possible reason for prescribing opioids in a form in which they provide the user with a high when there is the option of extended release, which does not provide any sort of high, can only be because those who make policy are ignorant of this most important fact.
1
Extended release drugs do have a helpful place in treating pain. They are only given appropriately to patients who have already been found, through prior treatment of some duration, to have an established dosage level which has been found to be safe and effective for each specific individual.
They are not used in patients initial treatment due to the high risk of overdose with long duration. They are usually quite potent, increasing this risk. Their slow onset through skin absorption would also require initial use of a short acting oral drug to cover acute pain till they became effective.
These established risks limits their use to a specific subcategory of pain patients.
What kind of punishment should the drug companies get for flooding the market with opioids?
8
There is nothing wrong with the death penalty for drug dealers. They are murders. What is wrong with the current system is that most rehab is not based on science and is bleeding the system with fraudulent treatments. The ads on TV boast of the speaker being a former addict and now a counselor. What does seem to work is addicting the addict to a different drug. If it makes people function on a day to day basis we should try that more extensively.
Many current addicts are not really interested in going into rehab. I don't understand why this current batch of addicts is treated like victims. Most started by taking drugs from friends and family, feigning a backache at the doctor's office or buying street drugs. We should treat them like what they are; criminals.
2
It ain't the drugs or suppliers. It's human development. Humans are VERY Perceptive. This explains how the uniformed can generate and/or support instant and obvious solutions without the benefit of reason. Good for personal survival. Bad for everything else.
Survival, as a goal, is addiction. This state of mind has nothing to do with drugs. It has to do with perception development. We know enough to promote development where perception serves judgment rather than replace judgment.
Especially for the prevention and treatment of Substance Use Disorders.
The research can be seen at www.duncanparkpress.com
As long as doctors can prescribe opioids, the epidemic will continue.
They have to become illegal or nothing will change.
How do I as a nurse handle the pain of a person dying at home with cancer pray tell?
7
Try pot - or is that illegal in TX (even Austin) ? Not trying to be sarcastic about real suffering, but this highlights the dilemma of appropriate medical options vs. moralistic and sadistic so called drug policies.
1
As someone with a family member who is addicted--and currently not using, living in a sober house after countless relapses--it's clear that the problem cannot be solved with an easy fix. First, it is a failure of our criminal justice system--which often is complicit with the sale and distribution of these illegal drugs (see Camden, New Jersey's tent city, where the cops overlook the distribution and use of these substances; is it possible they're under the finger of organized crime trafficking in these things from Philly, Atlantic City, and the Camden waterfront?) Next, individuals who use aren't necessarily victims: often they relapse after being cleaned up because they want to--it's a question of human freedom, even in light of the psychological liabilities that forged the addictive process to begin with, i.e., the lack of meaning or the emotional suffering that nudged them in that direction. Finally, it's reductive to say the drugs are coming in through legal channels. They're coming in any way they can, and largely--although I'm against the wall and persecution of illegal immigrants--through Mexico. I'd like to see this administration go after the organized crime channels involved in that--the same organized crime involved in things like casino gambling, and in extortion racketeering. As my loved one says, "I started using to cope with emotional problems, then the drugs became a problem." They can't become a problem if the organized crime structure is dismantled.
2
Let me guess. If the administration takes action to reduce opioid prescriptions it will be in a punitive and draconian way that does not balance the very real need for pain treatment for many people. Where is the balance between over-prescribing and denying pain management to patients? Trump can't do anything right. Guaranteed he will make people suffer needlessly.
6
You cannot, in a modern democracy, execute people for selling drugs, as reprehensible as that activity might be. It is contrary to all of our principles of "punishment to fit the crime" and of eliminating "cruel and unusual punishment". Drug dealers are enablers, but they're not murderers and must not be confused with murderers.
1
I take issue with labeling Trumps drug-dealer death penalty and The Wall as "law and order hits." As the clear, majority opinion among those who WORK in law order - those are not their go-to ideas. The Wall is a racist/xenophobe, foolish waste of money on dumb symbols hit. And the death penalty is a hit among the nastier elements of his base, and also the US populace in general. Those who believe the threat of the death penalty is a deterrent to crime. It ain't!
As to the lack of effort on the opioid crisis. I'm not shocked. Not when the Idea-guy, Trump, lives in an isolated and strange world of ardent belief in knowing-everything, surrounded by a few remaining (but maybe soon to arrive more) sycophants. Whose top players (Conway, Miller, etc) have not contributed any good ideas, or legal ones (hello Miller!) to date.
Trump has ideas...oh does he ever...but logical, legal and as such truly actionable ones? Not so much. Even the ideas that he can actually enact, like tariffs, need a whole party of informed, experienced and up to date insight, from star quality advisors. Which Trump is woefully short on, and of those out there with such qualities and possible interests, few if any wish to work for him. (especially those concerned about their future careers)
Trump's world view, is so perverse, so outdated, it would almost be comical, a great premise for TV sitcom president. Funny, if the reality wasn't so real,and the victims of the opioid crisis were not so real.
6
Is he seriously talking about executing big drug pushers? I don't think the pharmaceutical industry will stand for that.
7
Yes, getting health insurance companies to cover mental health and substance abuse treatments is a good idea, but Trump wants bang, boom, and big solutions, so it makes him look good. As usual, no substance, empty promises, and plenty of bluster from a president who won't listen or study up on the details.
4
Trump is going to execute drug dealers? Great! He can start with the pharmaceutical company executives, like the Slater family! They are ones who pushed oxycontin on doctors and told them it was a safer alternative to other narcotic analgesics. They deserve to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Then he can arrest the doctors who write hundreds of prescriptions for the drugs, not caring who got them or what happened to them. They equally culpable.
Ops, I suppose he had average joe street-level dealers, primarily minorities, in mind. Nevermind. Been there; done that. Racist and does nothing to stop the problem. BUT, it does put money in the coffers of the private prison industry! So there is an upside for his benefactors.
4
My son is a recovering heroin and opioid addict. He nearly died several times last spring. Multiple overdoses each week. Hospitalized twice with sepsis. But he lives in Madison, WI, where there are services and he has Medicaid. He has a psychiatrist, substance abuse counseling, health care, recovery groups, dental care, etc. He has been clean since June 7 and is coming back to himself, working as a cook, getting his teeth fixed, etc. He got to hold his baby nephew - which I thought would never happen. He will be a tax paying, contributing citizen and hopefully a supporter of others finding their way back from the darkness of drugs. I think Trump is pushing the death penalty for dealers not b/ that is the best way to fight the opioid epidemic, but b/c it got him the most applause at his latest campaign event in PA and b/c he is a fan of Duterte in the Phillippines. Trump is a dictator wannabe.
10
1 in 2 opioid deaths, I read, are from prescriptions, and 4 of 5 heroin deaths are people who initially got addicted though prescription medications. If you do the math 90% of opioid deaths are people addicted through legal prescriptions, signed by licensed physicians.
The pharmaceutical companies are behind most of the inappropriate prescribing by corrupting physicians and that is where the problem lies, and where the solution lies.
We need huge resources to fix the mayhem pharmaceutical companies caused, and they should pay the bill. The tobacco companies paid the bill to reverse nicotine addiction. It is time for Oxycontin and the likes to shell our the necessary funds to fix what they broke.
5
Dear Mr. Trump
This is not a supply side issue but a demand side. So, either legalize all of the overconsumed drugs, both the illicit and the legal ones, and for those who do not have health insurance give it away for free. Discontinue use of the recovery drugs like Narcan. Gradually increase the toxicity of the free stuff while at the same time eliminate any government support for prevention and recovery. Providing any health care for the users does not have a justifiable return to the taxpayers. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to fight a drug overuse by going after that supply side. Remember, taking this approach during the Prohibition era did not work. However, if more of the demand side of the curve is eliminated the smaller the problem will be. Once the demand side of the curve is gone the supply side will also die off. Maybe you need to give the death penalty to the users as this will increase the speed of decline in overall usage. Very sad, but very true. Now, as President, are you ready to fix this mess or do you just want to continue to talk about it?
How about locking them up for the rest of their lives if convicted without the possibility of parole? Isn't that a more fitting punishment, to be placed in a cell for the rest of their miserable days?
Aside from the moral issue of the state taking a human life, when the state sentences a person to death it triggers appeals that can go on for years, costing the state millions of tax payer dollars in court costs and lawyers' fees. Incarcerating persons for the rest of their days costs roughly $35,000 per year. Do the math.
2
It is glaringly evident that the man occupying the oval office is unfit to lead this nation. After having a simple hernia repair and in no particular serious discomfort, my doctor wrote a prescription for pain I might experience at home. I decided to take one before retiring after which I experienced unfamiliar feelings of disengagement. I checked the prescription name, which was oxycontin and threw the entire bottle into the garbage. I took one Tylenol and got through the night just fine. When I questioned my surgeon as to why he would prescribe such a strong and addictive pain killer, his reply was thus. "Most people do not tolerate pain well." So there you go. I'm sure there are more painful surgeries and require strong pain killers but he should have discussed it with me.
9
Solutions like the death penalty, building a wall, and "Just Say No" campaigns are solutions equal to Trump's dismal interest in this topic. He's only talking about it because so many of his base were affected by this epidemic.
He doesn't have time, nor care to make time to research and develop solutions that would work. Why? Well, partly because he insists on doing everything himself. He has such a wonderful brain, don't cha know? It's partly because he's very preoccupied with Mueller breathing down his neck. But, mostly because he has no intention of providing the financial resources to implement effective solutions.
His priorities are the wall and building up the military. Besides, his republican cohorts in congress want to dismantle all forms of health, education, public health, environmental and safety net services that would be necessary to combat this national epidemic.
This president is unqualified to fulfill his duties. Why would anyone think for more than a nano-second that his solutions to any problem would have merit???
9
I'll entertain the ridiculous notion of putting drug dealers to death provided that the drug company executives who send millions of Oxy pills to small, backwoods towns are the first to be strapped to the chair.
8
I thought the GOP was all excited about Freedom, whatever that means. Regardless of your interpretation, Freedom probably doesn't mean executing alleged drug offenders. Many oppressive autocrats do reduce drug trafficking and drug use by murdering people, but you can be sure that those societies do not have much Freedom.
Another way to think about it: the Freedom loving GOP and NRA love guns. Guns in the wrong hands kill Other People, but in the name of Freedom we allow lots of guns to proliferate. Drugs in the wrong hands kill drug abusers, but not Other People. Why would the GOP think it's okay to murder people who use and deal drugs but it's not okay to murder people who peddle arms?
There is a balance between Freedom (again, whatever that means) and Order (whatever that means). China has low Freedom but high Order. The high seas has high Freedom but low Order. The US has always strived to be somewhere in between China and the high seas. It goes without saying that murdering drug dealers may sound good for a Hollywood movie, but is way too oppressive for us.
All especially true in a country that seems to encourage Freedom through mass weaponization of its citizens!
2
I don't understand why some people keep acting as if Donald Trump has any interest in solving problems or helping people who are not rich. His 'plan' is designed to appeal to the most ignorant and ardent part of his base; people who are as ignorant and prejudiced as he is. People who still believe that if you put a few 'just say no' commercials on TV and kill a few big time dealers (whom they suspect are not white) and send everyone else (who isn't white) to jail, all of the country's problems will disappear.
The only people who are more willfully ignorant than the Trump base are the editorial writers who keep writing editorials that presume that someone in the Trump administration or at least in the Republican Party actually cares about opioid addicts other than Rush Limbaugh.
7
It will get interesting when corporate pharma CEOs are found to be the ones fueling the epidemic by ignoring large drug purchases from pharmacies in small towns. Trump will love pulling the lever on a multimillionaire CEO. He is dying to kill someone without any consequences to himself. Just part of his basic psychopathology.
1
So does this mean the doctors and pharma executives will be among those drug dealers being executed? My son's first drug dealer was his doctor who introduced him to the opioids that got him addicted.
2
You can't take anything he says seriously. Stop reporting his speeches, just his actions.
6
It seems that health care and offering alternative life styles with education and jobs is a positive response to the drug epidemic. Creating a valued proposition and outweighs drug use is much cheaper and actually improves US productivity. Negative reactions to problem have never resolved the issues. DJM
Trump is the darling of the right to life crowd but offers up the death penalty as dealing with drug dealers. Ain't religion great?
5
"full of sound and fury but signifying nothing"
How about the full quote from Macbeth: "A tale told by an idiot".
6
If ever there was a time for a full frontal assault on Reagan's 1982 War on Drugs, this is thatt. Throwing millions of people of color in jail and branding them as felons -- restoring them to their 3/5th human status they enjoyed during slavery that the law and order crowd likes so much (ie: Make America Great Again, etc).
When crack was an epidemic, it was criminalized. But the opiod epidemic is a white person problem, affecting white, downwardly mobile communities-- and so suddenly people talk about addiction, rather than criminality.
Trump's desire to execute drug dealers, a la Duterte, no doubt plays well to his base, who want nothing more than to blame a bunch of Mexicans on the fact that their white kids and old friends are all strung out on dope. In White America there always has to be a scapegoat to absolve people of responsibility.
But given that so many of us can look now on the War on Drugs as little more than a sham form of racial control, a way to divert vast funds to state levels, and support a hugely profitable prison industrial complex that does nothing to stem the problem of drug addiction, maybe it's a good time to chuck all those "law and order" paradigms and end the expensive and terrifyingly brutal War on Drugs.
We don't have drug dealer problem coming from Mexico -- we have a supply and demand problem. And if conservatives actually believed their own religion of "personal responsibility" they'd focus on who's buying the drugs, and why.
6
Have another War On Drugs, throw them all in jail.
Trump seems unaware of the fact that the most dangerous illegal drug - fentanyl - is shipped here from China using ordinary mail. No Mexican wall can stop that.
6
Execute them? How many doctors, pharmacists and drug company executives will we lose? These people didn't start buying drugs on the street corner, they were prescribed....and the pushers, the drug companies, should be held responsible. You can execute a company, but then who'd want to lose the campaign contributors?
3
Well, at least the 38% of Americans suffering from opioid addiction are mainly his supporters. The list of states with the highest level of opioid addiction (top 8) recently published in USA Today are all states where the majority voted for Trump. Hard to feel too sorry. Maybe if the now mostly (5 conservatives) corrupt SCOTUS ends up agreeing with him on capital punishment, Trump's own government will begin murdering his own supporters.
2
Well, is Trump willing to execute the doctors who accept bribes to write more and more prescriptions that result in addiction? Is Trump willing to execute the big pharma executives who produce and market these drugs through lies and corruption?
We need to legalize and reasonably regulate all recreational drugs. It is simply less overall destructive (see alcohol Prohibition). We would have dosage and quality control. We could still have case-by-case prohibition as we do with alcohol.
Next, we need to work on alternatives for chronic pain treatment, while realizing that the "crisis" aspect of opioid use is that people's lives have insufficient opportunity and meaning to make it "worth it" to avoid drug use and addiction. If every American had a real opportunity for a life sufficient in resources and meaning, there would not be a "crisis."
All of this chest-thumping about "drug use" is simply a distraction from the structural failure of our society to provide real opportunity and meaningful, secure, lives. In short, this is a cheap chattering about a symptom that allows the beneficiaries of the current rotten system to misdirect the attention of the public.
Finally, if we do decide to "execute our way" out of drug use, we need to kill the users. Give the dealers immunity to turn over the users. Pee test them, blood test them to be sure, and then kill them. Without demand we would have no drug dealers. Killing the dealers is simply to sustain the "long Vietnam" of the "War on Drugs. Useless!
In short, we need to address demand for drugs -- either by giving people a better life as the alternative to drugs, or, if addicted to "tough guy" solutions, by killing users. Demand is the issue.
The most "truly absurd idea" in this editorial is the NYT saying that "Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
The War on Drugs was from its inception a pretext for demonizing, repressing and incarcerating Black & Brown people, inner city youth in particular. (H.R. Haldeman's diary cites Nixon: "the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to"; https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/us/haldeman-diary-shows-nixon-was-war....
With unerring consistency, successive presidents "came through" with harsher, racially skewed laws and sentencing guidelines until the U.S. had the highest incarceration in the world, 60% Black and Brown people, with a large percentage drug or drug-related.
Now to think that TRUMP, Sessions and that whole white supremacist, fascist crew are sincere about helping victims of addiction is criminally naive, at best.
The Trump/Pence agenda is ethnic cleansing of immigrants, unleashing of police on the inner cities, suppression of democratic rights, and crushing anyone, including liberal politicians, who stands in their way. So every issue, no matter what, becomes a pretext for demanding the wall, tougher policing, capital punishment, and for denouncing/threatening sanctuary cities, even though none of these have anything to do with solving the problem he is allegedly addressing.
This is fascism, not "ineptitude."
3
A person who doesn't understand the problem cannot offer any meaningful solution to it.
2
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
Don't go there. There is nothing sincere about this treasonous charlatan, except his love for himself and his worship of Putin.
That speech in New Hampshire was a meandering, meaningless, self-praising photo-op from start to finish, a slap in the face to families and communities suffering from this epidemic.
3
The dealers of opioids are big pharma. Does Citizens United suggest that the corporations can be executed?
1
GOP to the rescue:
1. Opioid crisis- talk and more talk
2. Immigration- useless wall
3. Affordable health insurance- repeal it
4. DOD waste- look the other way
5. Budget deficit- make it much worse
6. Tax loopholes for the rich- find even more
7. Farm state exports- undermine with new trade war
8. Law enforcement- attack FBI
9. World leadership- attack democracies, celebrate dictatorships
10. Veterans healthcare- undermine VA to increase corporate wealth
7
Our Narcissist-in-Chief fundamentally does not care about the well-being of other people. He is "hard-wired" for this indifference. Witness his scandalous disregard of the continuing suffering of Puerto Ricans, our fellow citizens. There are numerous other examples. Instead, he manipulates human tragedy to emphasize his faux "toughness", such as his ineffective reaction to the scourge of gun violence in schools and the greater society. Trump's retreat to a death penalty "solution" to deal with the opioid crisis, a public heath issue, is predictable and not surprising.
This Fake President is utterly, unequivocally, incapable of evincing any actual leadership capability, and certainly not on the level demanded by the inherent responsibilities and challenges of the Presidential Office. If Trump has a complete disregard for his spouse, re his systemic adultery, why should he care, or be expected to, about the mental and physical health of any other people?
1
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic. But more than a year into his presidency, he is miserably failing them."
Can we please stop pretending that he has any sincerity or empathy or humanity. He does not. He wakes every morning wondering who he can bring pain to that day.
I don't remember if he has any executives from big pharma on his cabinet or his advisory people; but that would be a good place to start cracking (pun intended) down on pushers.
One of the deplorables he was going to anoint a drug czar tried, while in congress, to give pharma a free pass pushing opioids.
The sooner we are done with Russian meddling in our government the better. We must elect democrats this November.
1
I do not see Trump solving a problem like the opioid epidemic. His approach, like inflicting the death penalty to drug dealers, is ridiculous because the roots of this epidemic is well within the drug companies pushing doctors to prescribe dangerous doses of opioids. Eventually the patient would get a huge problem, the big pharma a huge profit.
What percentage of people die from legally or illegally obtained prescription drugs? I was under the impression that it is a large number.
Does Mr. Trump include doctors, pharmacists and CEO's of drug companies potential targets of his death penalty solution?
“Some 64,000 people in the United States died of drug overdoses in 2016, including 481 in New Hampshire, one of the hardest hit states in the country...” Really, NYT? You can do better than this. If 481 deaths were in one of the hardest hit states, and there's 50 states...your math is seriously lacking.
Your article represents the following as a good idea: "...the administration would seek to reduce opioid prescriptions...” This month, my pharmacy benefits company informed me that coverage for the opiate which I have been prescribed for over 18 months will be decreased by 67%. My physician, who is a nationally-known expert in the rare disease from which I suffer, prescribed this opiate because it addresses the specific pain from which I suffer every waking minute. My pain is not just CHRONIC, but it is INTRACTABLE, and CONSTANT. My medications don't fully eliminate the pain, but (generally) control it enough to allow me to concentrate on being functional in my professional position, contributing in my own way to society. When my pain is out of control, it is difficult to concentrate.
I'm trying to maintain my profession. This insurance decree puts me at risk of not being able to continue to work, due to the completely unnecessary meddling of the insurance industry in the decisions of my physician, who is the true expert in this field. I truly fear for those with less family and professional support than I have. These decrees will cost lives due to suicides.
3
Last evening I watched a 1996 George Carlin comedy performance on Netflix. He addresses many of the exact same issues then as we are still struggling with today; from conservative politics to abortion. He addressed the notion of killing drug dealers. His take on it was interesting. If you want to stop the drug epidemic, don't kill drug dealers who die in the streets everyday. Kill the white bankers that launder their money.
Nothing has been done since 1996. Watch and weep.
59
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
He is not. This speech was nothing more than his usual "Buy Some Swampland for a Bargain" speech.
4
Trump might be concerned?? Are you kidding? Don't you get it? He's totally self absorbed. There is ultimately no concern for anyone else... no one.
1
The other night PBS Newshour did a segment on the success that Buffalo, NY, has had in responding to its opioid crisis. Not surprisingly, Buffalo’s response to the crisis consisted of doing almost the exact opposite of what our president has recommended.
3
Trump is all about the speech and the cheers of a crowd. He's all bluster with no substance. He admitted he makes stuff up. He has no credibility. I realize he's the president, but nothing he says has any meaning.
3
By "drug dealers," I hope that Trump includes the many doctors who knowingly overprescribe or illegally prescribe narcotics such as OxyContin to patients (or nonpatients) who clearly are abusing them. Same goes for pharmaceutical companies that promote their drug to physicians with deliberately false claims that it is nonaddictive.
So, President Trump, will we be executing doctors and Big Pharma execs along with street corner sellers? Fair's fair, right?
2
Execution is a revenge ‘solution’ sold by those with few ideas to those with less ideas. Sure it’s gratifying to wipe out those that do great harm, but how about applying this fix to cigarette makers, the biggest drug dealers in history and responsible for millions of casualties. Prevention after the fact works best with prevention before and during, i.e. education and treatment. I had a daughter addicted to opioids, and I can tell you I wished her enablers harm but I wished more that there was help somewhere. There isn’t.
1
The first thing that should be done regarding the crisis of addiction is education and the first place to start is the President and his adviser and then the general public. The drug industry is and supply and demand business the idea of a "pusher" is a myth, they are merely suppliers of what ever substance the disease of addiction demands. Liquor stores are not pusher emporiums they are legal retail outlets of a very dangerous, destructive and addictive drug.
It is interesting that the state neighboring New Hampshire, where Trump gave his speech, Vermont, has had great success with their addiction problem because they treat it as a public health emergency and not a law enforcement problem. You can't punish your way out of addiction just like you can't punish your way out of cancer. Addiction is a disease not a morale failing.
1
in all of this nowhere are his efforts to actually help the vulnerable. he'll bring the punishment if he can but he will never understand or restore the communities that have fallen apart due to economic deprivation. our government is corrupt and we better do something about it starting this fall. we have a very long road to go.
1
Speaking as someone who lives in a state with one of the highest opioid addiction rates in the nation that has both state and local lawmakers and law enforcement agencies at a loss for an answer, I have to say I am totally unimpressed by Trump’s authoritarian/strongman-wannabe opinions. Death sentences (by firing squads? that would be a nice visual) and walls are laughably and insultingly simplistic in light of this crisis.
People in too many areas of this country have just given up. Education systems are failing, and as they die, so do job prospects. People live in regions that have been dismissed and neglected by political parties for decades. Cities are being left to rot while tax breaks go to the wealthiest and to corporations that have no stake beyond their own interests. Incomes decline, retirements vanish. Health care in all forms is tenuous, as treatment facilities and programs are always the first to go in budgets.
Until we recognize this broken society and its total loss of hope, the problem will get only get worse. Human beings have a finite tolerance for pain, especially psychological pain. When they reach their limit, it’s no surprise that they look for ways to dull it.
1
What about the pharmaceutical executives and all the doctors writing prescriptions for opiates? That's where the problem starts. If we're going to go after drug dealers, let's start with them because more people are dying from abusing prescription medication than from illegal narcotics.
1
Trump's mouth talks about an opioid crisis, but his brain is imaging a black kid on a street corner selling crack. He is incapable of connecting the CEO's and medical professionals (his doners) with any sort of problem related to drugs. Of course, the black kid doesn't work the $100,000 a plate circuit, or write him checks.
1
Trump is envious of President Duterte of the Philippines.
3
Trump blusters about everything - that's about all he's good for, other than wanting to be spanked in his jockey shorts. What a pathetic excuse for a human being (much less president of the United States).
3
Drugs don't kill people, people kill people.
1
Build that wall... kill them all. There's a new sheriff in town. So... if my 15-year-old gets caught and convicted for peddling pot then I guess they'll be facing the death penalty according to POTUS and the pixie sheriff? Sad that he uses the New Hampshire visit to prey on the grief and sorrow of families while spewing his usual specious vacuous drivel and empty promises.
5
Let's get it straight, drug dealers are vile, despicable people, OK? That said, they are not forcing the buyers to buy their sick products, in fact, they are not the ones being first in contact with the buyers to get them hooked. The ones really at the heart of all this mayhem are doctors who freely and, often, oversupply. Then there are also current users who want others in so that they can milk out help to feed their own addiction. I feel that these are the two biggest pushers of these bad drugs, as far as human pushers. I do not see anyone up in arms to go after these 2.
I want to suggest something that may have a chance of succeeding but I do not know what that is either. I have seen a good link between recreational drugs and later addiction and this is direct observation. A good friend, not into drugs, used my ex-GF as his first main source to get MJ. I broke off romantically with the woman after she tried to get me started, even surreptitiously putting MJ in cookes without telling me. Last I saw of the male friend, he was a ex-husband, strung out drug user. The ex-GF is white and we 2 guys are black. I never succumbed to using any drugs and firmly believe refusing recreational MJ saved me. The MJ today is so much more powerful and addictive that I do not allow recreational users in my presence knowingly.
When we blacks were fighting it, we had to rough it. Whites are finding that roughing it is hard, like we did. The only sure cure is to never start with any of them.
There is no excuse for such criminal ignorance on the part of a head of state in the modern world. There has been plenty of research and there are plenty of experts who could shed light on what has caused this epidemic and the many many steps that will need to be taken to end it. The notion that killing drug dealers is the answer is abject stupidity. This must be deeply embarrassing to the majority of Americans who did not elect this nincompoop.
2
Well, he admires the fact that the president of the Philippines has issued orders to kill dealers, so why not?!! He’s turning us into a banana republic with trade wars and proposals to kill and deport whoever they don’t like, thank you conservative America.
2
Managing addiction requires a bio psycho social approach. 95% of people in jail use street drugs. 90 % of people in jail have mental illness of which substance use is number 1. The largest mental hospitals in America are prisons like the 5000 bed twin towers in Los Angeles.
3
We know Duterte's death squads execute street addicts and pushers who are addicts supporting their habits, Are drug kingpins summarily executed? How much are they willing to pay to stay in business? This type of corruption is even too much for Trump to engage in. But local law enforcement in the Philippines and Duterte himself? What do you think?
1
Is Trump on fentanyl?
1
President Trump is so ridiculous and reductive it becomes challenging, even boring, to continually point out these facts. That is the danger: outrage fatigue.
3
So this means that he is going to execute the CEOs of Big Pharma?
3
Don't forget that he also wants to start another "just say no" "this is your brain on drugs" PSA campaign for kids. These didn't work the first time around! I don't understand why Trump and Sessions are determined to take us back to the 50's - they're ridiculous!
1
The Opioid Epidenic explained.....
Rich kids from NYC dying from overdoses in Vermont...........
1
Does does this mean that Trump wants to to line up the board of directors of Purdue Pharma in front of a firing squad?
1
Donald Trump wants the permanence of Xi Jinping and the power of Vladimir Putin to rule like Rodrigo Duterte...
1
The opoid problem lies at the feet of the Pharmoceutical Industry, where did Oxyicontin come from? Along with the Physician’s and their prescription pads.
The rest is window dressing. Executing drug dealers, inddeed.
1
Yawn. Just another proposal to lock up poor people in possession of small amounts, but look the other way when rich white college kids and suburbanites trade in drugs. As far as big suppliers are concerned, well the tax law just booster the earnings of the biggest opioid peddlers - the Sacklers! Guess it's time again to purchase stocks in CCA and Purdue.
5
You are generally apt to get preposterous, absurd and cockamamie ideas relative to difficult issues from cockamamie, absurd and preposterous leadership..
1
Trump, full of bluster, foaming at the mouth, signifying NOTHING.
Sad.
2
Trump is a smug know-it-all who understands nothing. Because he doesn't drink, he thinks people with addictions are weaklings or criminals. But look at his life-long addictions: fame, money, women, and power. Aside from the women, who become less interesting when you're old, obese, and unhealthy, could he give up any one of these to save his own soul?
I don't think so either.
5
Even after more than a year of this monstrous presidency it is still astounding how frequently Trump's policies sound the inane rantings of a drunk on a bar stool.
3
Whoever thought I'd wistfully yearn for the good old days of Nancy Reagan's naive inanity of "Just Say No"?!?!
I wonder what Pharma's CEOs have to say about the death penalty talk for opiod dealers.
1
Is Cadet Bone Spurs really going to execute all the drug dealers? (Other than Big Pharma, obviously.) Will he give them time to defend themselves, in a court of law? Or is he gonna strap on six-guns, mosey down to 5th Avenue, guess who the good guys are and simply mow down the rest?
This guy is truly a whiz at Policy. Small wonder he was such a "successful businessman."
1
Pro-life, until birth.
1
I cannot believe the NY Times actually sets out at the top of this editorial to seriously analyze whether executing drug dealers in fact helps prevent drug abuse. Only in the most justicially bankrupt, brutally repressive countries in the world are drug dealers executed. Only those regimes that also torture and summarily sentence, only those civil societies in which the rule of law has, for all practical purposes, been suspended, executes drug dealers. The idea has been promoted lately by one regime that has made it notorious and that is the Philippines. We know of course that our president admires Duterte, a megalomaniac butcher. It reminds me of what American troops discovered when they arrested Manuel Noriega in Panama during the invasion under President Bush the elder. In Noriega's private lair they found a kind of shrine to Hitler, whose tactics and flair for cruelty Noriega greatly admired.
This president of the United States is a fascist. This latest rant is one further proof that there is no sense in which that is a hyperbole.
It is repulsive to see the Times actually do a cost-benefit analysis of the idea of executing drug dealers. That is Trump's argument, as it is for the Wall. The point isn't that these things don't work - - the point is that they're the kind of ideas that will taint any rights-loving democracy that flirts with them beyond redemption.
3
Trumpf is following the Duterte model.
Well, is he going to execute all the Big Pharma execs? Or what?
This is all nuts. It doesn't solve any problems. Worse it's terrorizing the people.
Go away Trump.
Trump and Sessions may outsource to Mexican drug cartels the 350,000 jobs of Americans producing and distributing cannabis in those states where the voters have legalized it. Many of the jobs are filled by recent veterans who make excellent security personnel, in the legal cannabis industry that must use cash, since banks are not allowed to deal with them.
I suffer from severe, chronic pain. I take an opioid pain killer. Because I do, I'm able to work and have a life. My pain will never go away. I am disturbed that so many people assume that I am a drug addict and a criminal. I take the pills responsibly and as prescribed. They don't make me high. If I take more than prescribed, I will run out before my next prescription. I am on a federal data base, so getting more pills is impossible. By the way, less than 8% of chronic pain patients are addicted. Most of the deaths are from stolen pills or those off the street. Furthermore, most of the deaths are because they are taken with alcohol, cocaine, or tranquilizers. Responsible people, who just want relief from unrelenting pain, don't do this. I live in terror that in the zeal to deal with this (true) problem, I will be cut off. I don't know what I will do if that happens.
5
I say legalize all drugs and tax their sales with all proceeds going into drug education, prevention, and treatment. Prohibition does not work as the war on drugs has failed. Let's try a different approach.
3
Who knows the best way to stop an addict?
We don't have enough knowledge to do this effectively - except there was the study last year that supported the "just say no" approach of abstinence and avoidance.
We have to start somewhere .
2
Reality Check: As long as medical insurance will Not cover alternate pain therapies (acupuncture, non-opioid drugs like cannabis, physiotherapy, electronic stimuli machines, etc.), the epidemic will continue:
3 out of 4 addicts got their first opioid as a prescription from a Doctor.
4
I would like to see your sources. That isn't necessarily true. Do we really know who our addicts are in the United States? I've read numerous articles, here and in other publications, which indicate the people dying are NOT getting their first opioid from a doctor's script. So, where is it coming from? A friend, a relative, a spouse. And no, MOST people don't get addicted to opioids. Unfortunately, for some reason, circumstances genetic disposition, I suspect, a whole lot of people are now addicted.
I was on major opioids for chronic pain for years and didn't have a problem with them - but I got addicted to tobacco and have dated an alcoholic. I eventually quit smoking (after several attempts) over 2 years ago, cold turkey. So I get addiction. I also went through opioid withdrawal when my doc was adjusting my dosage on my pain patch. It was miserable and scary.
What is the best way to clean up this mess? Tight control of all opioid meds written, dispensed, ordered, and shipped from the pharma companies. That controls the legal stuff. Safe injection sites with narcon and clean needles. That is the only way to keep people ALIVE! We can also offer them ways to test their drugs, so they know they aren't laced with fentanyl. If people are coming to safe sites - they may enter rehab. I would go so far as to suggest offering drugs to them. Yes - drugs we KNOW are safe. A SAFE high. Other countries do it - it WORKS.
The term "drug pusher" is itself a dangerous misnomer, unless applied to pharmaceutical companies that spend over 6 billion each year pushing drugs in the media and in direct-to-physician promotions. Blackmarket drug sellers don't advertise, they have no authority over people's lives, no reach into every home. They sell but they do not "push." Addicts seek them out, beat paths to their doors; not the other way around. And the scale of demand creates new ones as fast as they are locked up. Blackmarket drug sellers are a symptom of the problem, nothing more. Fixation on them as a causal factor is not just mistaken; it is disingenuous, an attempt to avoid taking serious measures to address addition.
10
My junkies are all dead. I expect the ones in the supply chain are also dead. Until you you reach the level of commerce. Those folks quietly take their mountains of cash. The stink of money from the mattress. Secure in the knowledge the smell is recognized in certain quarters like a free pass from an Afghani general.
That shining city on the hill? No closer than it was a generation ago.
2
Let's be clear. The trumpeter is a social Darwinist who believes that the weak deserve to die. Opioid -addicted citizens are weak and need to die.
Trump does not know what do to about this opioid problem---and his apprenticeship does not care.
He would not understand that entire counties are rotting , festering, committing suicide.
It is necessary to find out 'why'.
1
Norbert -- we know why.
It is hopelessness because there is no way for most people to earn to enough money to live a life they want to live.
Until the income inequality in this country is addressed, absolutely nothing is going to change.
Unless something earth-shattering happens at the ballot box in November, forget about it. The US will officially be over.
Trump's vanity and bluster got the best of him, as usual. bullying his way to announce half measures based on punishment rather than prevention and treatment and educating all about what's going on and what is available. Brutus ignoramus Trump will never comprehend that, as long as there is the demand for opioids (among other illegal drugs) in these United States, there will be suppliers (providers) at home and abroad. The way ugly Trump expresses himself is full of hate, not conducive to a rational approach to a drug epidemic. And Duterte assassinating both, providers and users, is a crime...but seemingly agreeable to Trump. The only thing I thought was worthwhile in his blabbering was to avail several institutions with Narcan (naloxone) to reverse breathing problems... potentially leading to death. Trump is a vulgar bully that never learn to express himself in a constructive way; instead, creating fear and dividing us, now demanding the death penalty for drug dealers.
Trump needs to delve deeply into this problem at the personal level. I suggest this study. He should gobble the minimum amount of oxycontin necessary to put a person into a coma. Then he should be injected with an amount of uncut heroin to kill a horse. Follow that with a diet coke, a burger, six bags of fries and a frosty freeze. This should create a state of empathy so he can join his followers in their happy state of bliss in the beyond the beyond.
4
Such an ill informed bloviator.
No mention of the plutocrat Sackler Family, who co-opted medical professionsls to be their drug pushers, ignored overwhelming evidence of the highly addictive nature of opioids, and proceded to become richer than Croesus by knowingly and willingly flooding the market - not with smack delivered by 'bad hombres' , but through "legitimate" prescription.
What penalty for them ?
10
I never heard about the Sackler Family, so I googled it, and I was appalled!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/16/sackler-family-blo...
I also looked up what political parties the Sacklers support and found generous support to both parties, but surprize surprize, they support Republicans at a greater ratio.
The Sacklers also support right wing causes like killing public education, just like Trump's Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, a pay-for-play billionaire with no experience working in public schools.
For more on Sackers undermining public education Google,
"The secretive wealthy family behind the opioid epidemic are using the same tactics to kill public education"
and see what I saw.
If Trump is serious about solving the problem he should target those making grotesque amount of money from 90% of the deaths.
3
Please, NYT......there is no"opioid epidemic"......there is a suicide epidemic. Opioids are just one method of doing that. Like guns, knives, poisons, etc. Splve the suicide epidemic and there will be no "opioid epidemic"........
1
Thank you, thank you!! You are the first person who has gotten this right, and really opened my eyes. This really makes sense with the general feelings of fear and hopelessness the 99% are experiencing in our country.
A year late and so many dollars short. Bluster and death threats are all the Trump offers, while Americans die.
2
This problem did not start Jan. 20, 2016.
1
Epidemic of mail order Fentanyl from China? Maybe we should ban packages shipped directly from China!
1
Heed the wisdom of Nancy Reagan: "Just say no."
1
Because that worked sooo well . . .
As I recall, a decade-long crack epidemic followed "just say no."
Ratcheting the war on drugs WILL precisely work for Trump. Liberals fail to grasp reality. Trump wants to murder drug dealers.
It is all about strongmen among a world of weak will.
Just over a year ago, in a characteristically obnoxious effort to ingratiate himself with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto Mexican, Trump, over the telephone, contemptuously referred to New Hampshire as 'a drug infested den'. Well, maybe everyone is tripping in the granite state judging from the warm reception they so happily gave their two faced president the other day.
If we start executing drug pushers a lot of doctors are going to be in trouble.
3
The 8000 kilo elephant in the room -- Americans dig drugs a whole lot.
1
Easter is coming. The shills will all feign compassion and forgiveness and redemption. Then refuse to cooperate and pay for a society which fosters any of it. When it is expedient to throw people away, they do so. Does anyone really believe the deep state ( pun) of hypocrisy that exists in this nation? The shame of it all makes me sick to my stomach.
2
If trump wants to go after drug dealers, perhaps he should execute the CEOs of the major pharmaceutical companies that push 'drugs for life' rather than drugs for cure.
2
why does something like Fentanyl exist? It's so dangerous that 1st responders have to wear hazmat suits if there is even the slightest suspicion that it is in the environment. A grain the size of a kosher salt particle is enough to kill you. So why does this substance exist at all? It's actually a pharmaceutical, so let's ask Big Pharma why?
1
You've obiously never needed it. Fentanyl SHOULD be heavily controlled by pharma. The black market got it, like they always do, and they're killing people with it. The problem with most opioids is that they are short acting. In other words, for someone who has severe pain, the meds work for a while, then they wear off. You end up in a cycle of relief and agony. I know because that is the cycle I was in - 2 hours of relief, 2 hours of agony. A human being cannot live like that.
Fentanyl comes in a patch for chronic long term pain. I was on one. It gave me my life back. It is also injectible into your I.V., in a hospital setting, for severe pain, because it depresses your respiration. I've had an even stronger med injected, Dilaudid, for pain. I'm not sure about either medication in pill form, never needed them. I was hospitalized both times for a relatively short duration, thankfully. I've had a few chronic problems with pain, but they've both resolved now. Thank God!!
There is no sincerity in anything this President says about helping anyone. He reads from a script for the applause or laugh lines to make himself feel good and then walks away. The Editorial Board is again trying to "normalize" this President instead of calling him out forcefully and challenging him to, for once, actually do what he says. That has not been the case on every statement he has made about helping anyone. Why would this be any different?
2
The opioid epidemic grew under Obama but the chosen one never get an editorial to blame him.A wall would not stop the entry of drugs but it would slow it down.A wall certainly would hamper the illegals who are pushing them.Sanctuary Cities should help ICE to get rid of illegals who are into criminal drug trade.Medical help is needed for addicts but Medicaid is not the vehicle.States should set up treatment centers with financial help from the Federal Government.No matter what the topic the Editorial Board turns it into an Anti-Trump diatribe.
1
You seem to have missed all of the activity in public health in your own state up to the time the GOP leader took office. There was a great deal of activity under Obama - but you clearly can't be bothered with facts, reality, truth, etc.
Point of Order: the leading suppliers of opioids in th USA are not Mexicans crossing the borders, undocumented immigrants dealing in the cities, or any of the other TV/movie tropes Trump refers to in his rants and tweets. Most of our opioids come from our own pharma companies, the evident role of those companies in creating the current surge of addiction and death is not criticized by Trump any more than he criticizes Putin.
Is Trump planning to execute our corporate fentanyl peddlers along with those who fit the inner city pusher profile? What about the owners of that drug store in Kermit, WV (pop. 392) that was shipped 9 million hydrocodone pills by pharma companies or the 2 stores in Williamson that were shipped 20.8MM OxyContin pills over the last decade. Who is he going to execute from those drug rings? #FailingPresidency
3
We need to execute some pharmacists and maybe a few regional sales veeps of pharmaceutical companies. I'm sure Pres. Trump has ideas for the method of execution, though after getting a ceremonial sword from the Saudis, he no doubt favors public beheading, particularly if he gets to do it. And if this unconstitutional nonsense holds him up, he should consider the extra-judicial route, like his bff Duterte. Imagine if he started riding an American-made motorcycle - three-wheeler night be safer - and dispatched these horrible, horrible people with his blade, exhorting "MAGA!" as he rode by. His polls would soar.
It doesn't have to be legal, and it doesn't have t work. It just have to sound like it should work, have enough "Truthyness" to appeal to the base. That is the Trump way. Death penalty, Border Wall, Deportations, Import tariffs all the same . Strangely it seems to work for him.
I’m sorry, but I cannot bring myself to accept even the possibility of Mr. Trump’s sincerity in wishing to address the opioid epidemic. As is always the case with Mr. Trump, imho, it is all about “branding” - cheap blather that signifies absolutely nothing. So once again, Trump tries to pump up his “tough guy” brand by appealing to the basest instincts of his base supporters. Any “good ideas” he mentions in any speech get slipped in by a rational speech writer, and Trump read the lines he was given. But all he understands and really cares about are the lines that induce raucous applause.
I wish you guys (NYT) would refrain from tossing out these fanciful, “Maybe in his heart of hearts ....” suppositions. Trump was, is, and always will be what he is - and that’s about as far from being a sincere, honest, or caring human being as anyone can get.
2
“The per-gram retail price of heroin fell by about 85 percent between 1981 and 2012” while the price of pharmaceuticals skyrocketed. The heroin trade is one with vigorous competition. Proof that competition drives down prices while government protected monopolies maximize them. Also proof that the war on drugs is lost. Prohibition doesn’t work. It never has and never will. Giving people positive reasons to not use drugs is what works. A culture that provides optimism and hope. Meanwhile, we should just let people do what they want with their own bodies and stop turning America into a police state.
"scholars have concluded that there is no good evidence that capital punishment deters crime."
Trump has no plan for the opioid crisis, just like he has no plan for anything except how to draw attention to himself.
However, on this point, just by pure chance, he is correct: The death penalty for high level drug dealers would serve as a major deterrence.
The studies of capital punishment are inconclusive because we do not have a laboratory and the data to study it adequately. But unlike how it was stated in the editorial, it is just as accurate to state the scientific evidence as follows:
"there is no good evidence that capital punishment would not deter crime."
Behavior is lawful. In every other arena of life the threat of negative consequences guides our behavior. And the worse the threat, and the more likely the threat, the more that negative consequences guide our behavior.
To apply this to the opioid crisis, if dealers who were profitting from opioids and then had someone die from what they sold were executed after lawful trial sand without years of appeals then this would most likely have a dramatic effect on the opioid crisis.
It will never happen. Instead, we will wring our hands and say we can pour money into treatment programs (for which there is no good evidence that they do much good either), and the problem will continue---just as it has continued for one drug after another in this country for decades.
Serious and severe consequences will work.
1
Given that some of the hardest hit places are in small towns in the Midwest that voted for him, does he think those people do not understand where the opioid crisis comes from or is he just displaying his usual ignorance? I imagine there at a lot of former supporters/voters that can see through him on this issue as it has touched their lives.
Also, the opioid crisis has generally been portrayed as starting with legal prescription drugs. Heroin is a different story, but prescription drug abusers are not getting their drugs from Mexico, it is more likely Canadian mail order (and that is mostly because of our inability to control prescription drug prices in the first place).
Wouldn't it be interesting to have a commission of experts (not political hacks with an agenda) to look at the issue and come up with a plan? This would be a great issue for a Foundation to tackle, as our government dominated by Republicans can't do it. The GOP doesn't have the ability to make independent judgements due to politics or simply old age. A discussion requires an open mind and the GOP creates commissions to validate whatever think they know ... regardless of their actual ignorance on a subject.
1
Trump will say anything that is politically expedient at the time he is speaking then he moves on with little to no action on whatever he said. Unless, of course, it is something the donor class wants. If the billionaires want it, the GOP will pass it unless the Democrats can block it. America: For the money, by the money.
1
Mr. Trump is all about blustery sound bites not sincerity.
To: Everyone commenting here who believes that the terrible opioid drug addiction problem gripping much of the US is due largely to stereotypical drug cartels -- i.e, criminal enterprises dominated by, as we say, 'drug lords' ...
Read this (in particular, paragraph 2): https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis
2
Thanks for that link.
Typical Trump: Tell the rubes what they want to hear, knowing you'll never do anything and they won't notice. Always act pompously "strong" and "forceful"; the dolts love that act, and they never check up to see if there's anything behind the mask, or the curtain for that matter.
Trump presented his opioid initiative on Monday. Today is Wednesday. Trump has forgotten all about the opioids by now.
4
The real opioid crisis is a pain crisis, where millions of long-term pain sufferers can no long get the relief they need from the only kind of medication that will allow them to live something like a normal life.
The great Chris Hedges, long a foreign correspondent for the NYTimes, has written on the utter cruelty of extending our deranged war on drugs to veterans.
In "The Last Days of Tomas Young," Hedges writes,
"Tomas Young was shot and paralyzed below his waist in Iraq in April 2004 when he and about 20 other U.S. soldiers were ambushed while riding in the back of an Army truck. He died of his wounds Nov. 10, 2014, at the age of 34. His final months were marked by a desperate battle to ward off the horrific pain that wracked his broken body and by the callous indifference of a government that saw him as part of the disposable human fodder required for war..................He began suffering terrible pain in his abdomen. His colon was surgically removed in an effort to mitigate the abdominal pain....... Veterans Affairs over the last eight months of Young’s life reduced his pain medication, charging he had become an addict. It was a decision that thrust him into a wilderness of agony. Young’s existence became a constant battle with the VA. He suffered excruciating “breakthrough pain.” The VA was indifferent. It cut his 30-day supply of pain medication to seven days. Young, when the pills did not arrive on time, might as well have been nailed to a cross."
1
As with every, single statement he makes, this one perfectly demonstrated his constant modus operandi... shallow bluster. He is the ultimate low-brow, classless showman, a braggadocio braying barker, a new age P. T. Barnum, aiming his wares directly, and shamelessly successfully, at the uneducated and vulgar masses.
Apologies to P.T. for the comparison.
5
Tough talk from an empty vessel. Just one more issue confronting this country that Trump knows nothing about nor cares to understand. He can't possibly–it's too complex a topic. In any case, add this to the list of reasons why this buffoon must be removed from office. Hey Ryan and McConnell, you guys awake yet?
1
"Some 64,000 people in the United States died of drug overdoses in 2016, including 481 in New Hampshire, one of the hardest hit states in the country" This is 0.0075 of the total -- an amazingly small percentage. Are your arithmetic skills really that bad?
It's your basic statistical skills that are lacking: the question is not each state's percentage of total US drug OD deaths, it's the # of drug OD deaths in each state in proportion to its population. New Hampshire (39.0 per 100K) had the third highest death rate of any state in 2016, after West Virginia (52) and, barely, Ohio (39.1). New Hampshire is, obviously, a small state.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_...
1
"But more than a year into his presidency, he is miserably failing them." Should we expect anything else from this miserable failure of a human being?
6
When Trump can be so cavalier as to proclaim we start executing drug dealers as though it were a throwaway line to score applause points with his supporters, we begin to see the depths to which Trump's recklessness and civic illiteracy extends. Of course, given we're only slightly past the first year mark of his administration, who knows what sort of fascist drivel he'll be serving up in a year's time to keep his supporters in fist-pumping mode. The longer he stays in office, the more craven his rhetoric is going to get.
3
The drug-mafioso, from its lowliest dealers to the fabulously rich cartel leaders, all endure a culture of unspeakable brutality with savage death the likely outcome for many. Why would the threat of a staid, sanitary state execution terrify or demotivate these folks if they aren't deterred by their current daily terrors?
I'm Donald Trump and I'm here to help you with your drug addiction. Sign up for my "How the Hero Always Wins and the Heroine Always Loses" seminar in Trump Tower for $1,999.00. If you relapse, you agree to pay a $1,000 loser fee. What a great incentive to stay clean! Call now. MAGA!
I don't want to minimize the severity of this epidemic, but it is no longer an unethical Dr, pharmacy, and pharmaceutical company driven chain of responsibility.
What we have is a heroin and fentanyl street drug epidemic caused by the crackdown of the above mentioned players.
Calling it an Opioid Epidemic is misleading and is unfair to patients in chronic pain, who use their prescriptions properly, if it's possible that ANY M.D., is not frightened enough to write such a script.
Attorney Jeff Session, you're old,frail, possibly prone to slipping in the shower and breaking your hip. Well good luck with 3 days of pain medication, then switching to ibprophen. Let Drs decide what medication is right for their patients.
Meanwhile, clean up the HEROIN epidemic, because it's killing as many people as the CRACK epidemic of the 1980s. Treatment and group homes are the cure. Our alleged colluding President only has his talking points feed to him by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. She got it wrong in her home state, now the National model is wrong.
Heroin is an opiate, but stop muddling it as a spin to legal legitimate medical terminology. The Nation's epidemic IS a HERION EPIDEMIC, a street drug,deadly and destructive.
Additionally where's your pro life stance, when you, Mr President, are calling for the death penalty? This writer is not disagreeing, nor agreeing, just confused by your logic, against women's reproductive rights, but kill the dealer.
1
There is plenty of reporting from this paper, the WaPo and other sources that the president has reached a new height of lunacy in that he is no longer listening to any of his advisors who in the past were able to talk him down off the ledge before he went in full deranged mode like he did yesterday in his rabid comments yesterday in N.H.
With trump unleashed from any constraints, we are now beginning to see even more clearly just how incompetent and absurd this man really is.
That speech yesterday should have been a "layup". Just get up there and read the speech that states such obvious recommendations like making available more treatment facilities and services. Not that the republicans would ever fund those ideas but you could have at least said that you were going to do it.
Instead, trump goes and says what he really believes. That executing drug dealers is a good idea. That building his stupid wall (see through no less) will stop drugs from coming in over the border. That TV ads will work to deter young people from trying drugs.
This is trump unleashed. Be afraid, be very afraid.
2
Opioids trail tobacco, alcohol and obesity in cause of death. It's a numbers game and a race game. Opioids disproportionately impact whites, in fact one name for them is hillbilly heroin. So white policy makers are scampering to try all the things that failed when heroin was the problem. They, the Trump Administration, start by focusing on a drug, not on why a person is using that drug. Eventually, sooner for some, they get trapped and the vicious cycle downward causes a whole host of other health problems that are not treated because of the policy obsession on drug use.
Ridiculous, ill-informed and inappropriate are the new normal, I'm afraid. "Cockamamie," on the other hand...
1
Drug dealers (esp. the ones in Mexico) often are not nice people and often do commit murder in addition to selling people bad drugs that kill them (manslaughter?). I too am not opposed to a death penalty. Rehab so ofen does not work.. and you need jobs usually away from the old friends and strong social relationships to help the druggie get back to normal.. Been there cone that.
Opioids are pretty good painkillers but they do breed dependency.. (BTW 600 tylenol is also an excellent pain killer but it upsets your stomach sometimes. I was happy to have the opioids b=post knee surgery and lots of ice packs. A friend endure the post surgery healing process on accetaminophen -- Tylenol.-(I was impressed.)
I am also for work programs for people on Medicaid. Too much time on one's hands can be a killer.
Our blood-thirsty leader wants to threaten drug users, already gambling with their very lives to begin with, with death? What drug is he on? It's called the "Donald Trump!" to paraphrase Charlie Sheen.
Does trump want to add Big Pharma, doctors, pharmacists and parents as drug pushers to his death list? "Its possible" that we are ready for wholesale slaughter with love in the streets like Duterte's Philippines.
Maybe he's after the millions of weed smoking Californians who voted against him to kill off. That'll show 'em for voting for Hillary. It's also a way to arm more drug users and dealers with guns looking to defend themselves from trump's executioners.
More poor and minorities are in prison for drug offenses. Is this his way of killing off a majority of those same people? - the poor and disadvantaged who have resorted to drug use to tolerate life and their predicament. Will he kill based on the drug of choice of whites or the drug of choice of brown people?
Making drugs more illegal, dangerous to produce, distribute and sell will only increase the cost and the amount of money going into that industry. Perhaps trump wants a cut so he can pay off his Russian loan-sharks. Let there be no sanctuary nations for trump to flee to!
If the wall goes up, maybe I'll invest in drone makers. Their production will increase as they are used to move drugs and money over trump's wall. Will Uber driver-less cars have to declare anything as they drive through border crossings?
1
I don't think the president really knows or cares about the opioid epidemic.
Does Trump understand that opioids are drugs prescribed by doctors?
It’s too bad Trump has to have anything to do with this crisis. His snarky remarks about New Hampshire being a drug-infested den (the only reason he could imagine people being stupid enough to vote for him, I guess) are proof to me that he does not care about people with problems like this. He’s likely to make matters worse.
There should be a multi-pronged approach—restrictions on over-prescription of painkillers without over-restricting to people who need them; effective treatment centers; public eduction so people understand how it happens and what the addiction process really is. But I do think attention also needs to be paid to the cause of the overdose epidemic—the introduction of fentanyl into the heroin supply. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the majority of overdose deaths are from heroin mixed with fentanyl. Fentanyl is cheap. It’s produced in illegal labs in China then cut into heroin to boost it and make it more profitable. And it’s a killer because it makes the drug unpredictable. I’m talking about death here, not addiction. Why not focus on dealers and following their chain up to the source? You can’t just throw up your hands and say this won’t help. Addiction treatment and busting dealers are not mutually exclusive (of course the death penalty is ridiculous—most dealers are petty criminals, but the big suppliers—they are major criminals). There is merit in pursuing this. You can’t help an addict once she or he is dead.
The NY Times may call it "Bluster" if it so chooses--but at least Trump is proposing solutions to this major health crisis. Remember...this didn't start under Trump--it's always been around--but really blew up under Obama.
Of course, while Liberals are scoffing at Trump's efforts, they are making the problem worse--by pushing for legalization of drugs, coddling and excusing drug dealers, and by supporting an open borders policy that ensures a cheap, plentiful supply of drugs. We've tried the Progressive approach. Kids are dying by the thousands. Time for something else. Scoff if you must...Obama was a disaster.
2
trump is NOT proposing solutions. he is saying what he thinks that his audience wants to hear. if he were proposing solutions, he would have legislation in the pipeline that legislators would agree with (and not some midnight written thing that need to be rubber stamped in 5 hours!).
he is a buffoon, plain and simple. he still thinks that he owns the company called 'america' and that only HE has answers and that everyone must do what he says. he has NO listening skills, NO reading skills, NO leading skills. he is a bully.
1
If it’s a major health crisis then the worst action you can take is destroying healthcare insurance. How does Trump compare to Obama in that arena?
Why is there no examination of why so many people wanting to escape the misery of their daily lives through the use of drugs?
Why so much pain, physical and mental ?
Trump doesn't care about these people. His only interest is setting himself up like Duerte who murders his own citizens routinely.
For drugs. It's part of his plan to become a total dictator so don't hold your breath waiting for him to do something about the opioids crisis.
In the meantime 30,000 people a year die from guns. What is he doing about that?
I wonder how many Big Pharma execs Trump and Beauregard will execute? I'm guessing Zero.
The NYT editorial board calls the opioid epidemic a "disease". It's not; that's a careless use of scientific words. Opioid abuse is a social problem, similar to alcoholism. Both disorders are in play with human appetites and weaknesses.
Does the US Vet Admin still classify alcoholism as a "volitional disease"? If so, opioid abuse should be regarded similarly. Think I'm nitpicking? Trump thinks drug dealers should be summarily executed; the root of this populist attitude embraced by Trump can be partly traced back to classification disputes of human social disorders in the scientific community.
1
And the last President did what? Didn’t even mention it.
1
How about the death penalty for corrupt politicians? Maybe then people wouldn't feel the need to escape our horrible reality.
2
Trump ought to know that the death penalty doesn't deter crime. Treason carries the death penalty, but Trump committed treason. Case in point.
2
Trump is not sincere and has never had a plan with substance and details on anything. He is cutting healthcare and mental health care while claiming to want to fight addiction. Same shoot yourself in the foot ideaology of not funding planned parenthood or supporting birth control while hoping to decrease abortions. Trump continues to be an empty suit with no ideas to help our country. The GOP Congress is just as bad to allow the farce to continue.
3
So you think Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this (opioid) epidemic. That is a joke; one with really bad taste.
2
He has been destroying the ACA, which is how many people have access to addiction treatment. So you are right, he does not care.
Trump has outdone himself. Human sacrifice. What a guy!
It seems stupid and wrong headed to talk first about after the fact solutions to the problem of opioid addiction like increasing funding for addiction treatment or making sure opioid overdose inhibitors like Narcan are available to first responders. Why don't we make it harder for opioids to be manufactured, distributed and marketed so there are less drugs to abuse?
Are we that afraid of pain and so addicted to opiates that we can't even think of making them less available so they are less likely to be abused? Or is it something darker and more venal in our nature that has to do with sales and profits and the bottom line? Are drug companies creating the problem of addiction to increase profits and make their bottom line look good?
Why do we assume addiction is a given? Why don't we target why so many opioids are manufactured, marketed and distributed? Why don't we even discuss the possibility of restricting the manufacture, distribution and marketing of opioids in order to make them less available to be abused? Seems to me that waiting until people are addicted before you do something about the problem is almost too late.
1
You are right, the manufacturers have treated opioids like cigarette sales. They have suppressed information that they studied showing the addictiveness of the drugs. All to make more money. In addition, opioids are ineffective for chronic pain. Drug companies are not in business to support a common good, that is just an incidental outcome. They just want money.
If it doesn't enrich the already rich or erase President Obama's legacy, trump won't do it.
Trump's substance abuse problem is his lies and lack of substance.
2
I was heartened to see that many of your readers get what I have yet to hear from anyone near this administration in any news report. This talk of drug dealers (and I actually heard ‘drug pushers’ in one instance) is ridiculous. We know this begins with pharma CEOs and doctors. But hearing language such as ‘drug dealers’ conjures up all sorts of images only a wall could cure, right? More racism, that’s what this is. It always comes back to racism with Trump. Always. Oh, wait, unless it’s sexism.
2
First off, it's NOT a disease, it's an addiction, recognize the difference. The NYT is clever in taking one thing and calling it another.
These people choose to take these drugs they can choose to stop.
1
Not exactly a medical professional are you. It has been considered a disease officially since 2012. Drugabuse.gov
Nope. It is a disease. PhD in public health - what are your credentials?
Trump can’t even stay on message. He blamed supposed sanctuary cities. Conveniently blaming Lawrence Massachusetts right over the border from NH. Yes, Lawrence is a drug problem. But instead of landing in Lawrence to help, Trump chickens out from across the border. We aren’t perfect in Massachusetts, but we recognize a coward when we see one.
2
This looks like a ploy to murder small-time street dealers. The real kingpins live with the threat of death anyway, so capital punishment won't scare them.
1
You can either have an effective addiction treatment program or you can criminalize everyone; but you can't have it both ways. I guess he might consider that his brother Fred might have become a drug addict rather than an alcoholic, and absent a rich father, turned to dealing to support his habit, whichis what Sweden apparently learned is more often than not the reality of the situation. He also might have recommended executing rapists, but given all the sexual allegations against him, that strikes a little close to home.
1
Does that mean that medical doctors who overprescribe and get beaucoup bucks from pharmaceutical companies will be executed for murdering their patients when those patients overdose?
1
The point is that Trump is part of the faction that wants all money in their pockets. To ensure the flow of dollars they need to get rid of anything that makes the money flow elsewhere. Paying for drugs (money to the cartels) is an example. Eventually paying you for your work will be problematic.
Most addicts sell small amounts to their friends meaning that they are nearly all dealers. Putting them all to death, means their money will get back into the Trump and friends pipeline. The dead won't need SS, medicare or disability. If any of them had real jobs, their jobs will be available, reducing unemployment. Killing makes great sense to Trump. Killings will need kangaroo courts to sentence dealers to death. Or Trump may try the Pilipino approach and engage in extra-judicial killings (a convenient way of getting rid of the opposition, fellow billionaires and other unwanted people). Such deaths signal the end of fairness in our judicial system. Fairness is necessary for democracy to work.
Trump is another murderous dictator in the making. Jews and non-whites should be very worried. There are few good people taking him on and fewer still in congress. We are seeing not just the death of our democracy, but the end of western civilization. The tiki torch mentality is incompatible with western democracy, the torches enlightened us only to the racism and debauchery of Trump, Bannon and friends.
1
You, The NY Times, provided Trump with what he really wanted-more light shining on him to boost his ego.
As for the latest and greatest Trump plan that will never bear fruit, it is nothing more than handing out baubles and shiny objects to his supporters so they can go forth and proclaim that the Great One, Trump, really can govern.
Next time, let the Trump story die on the vine as there is nothing of substance to see, just like his so-called administration.
In his pronouncements on the national opioid crisis, as in everything else with this faux president, it does not matter in the least what he says. His stated positions are as ephemeral as an April snow, so reporting on them (while of course you must do so) is almost completely pointless.
Trump suggested the use of the death penalty but in an ambiguous way. In fact, drug dealers carry those guns that liberals detest and sometime use them. A dealer who commits murder in the course of his dealing is a candidate for the death penalty in most death penalty states. If Trump's statement is interpreted to conform with the law, it is perfectly sensible. If it is interpreted in a manner inconsistent with the law, it is ridiculous. The Editorial Board chooses to accuse Trump of irrational overreaction. This says more about the Board than about Trump's statement.
If the USA wants to decrease the drug smuggling they should get the collaboration of the other countries and go after the cash generated; instead of building a wall stop the banks to accommodate the traffickers.
It is a business, reduces the $ it is generating...oh, I see, you don't want to hurt the fiscal paradises!
So the President wants to execute CEOs of pharmaceutical companies? Since they are the largest sellers of opioids in this country (and they do not smuggle them in across the border!) and therefore responsible for a large number of deaths. I wonder how those CEOs feel about that??
Meanwhile, Trump ignores national security professionals and calls Putin to congratulate and make a date with him. No mention of Putin's drug dealing in nerve toxins. No reprimand for killing civilians on NATO soil. No mention of his provocative, warlike acts against our greatest ally. No mention of sanctions, boycotts, or investigations of Putin's treachery. Only more cozying up to our biggest enemy on the international stage.
Please, GOP, you got your stolen SCOTUS seat and your tax heist. You don't need Trump anymore. Can we have our country back now?
1
I agree with your points here. What is missing is the fact that the “drug dealers” in the opioid crisis are the drug companies themselves. So I’m wondering which CEOs will be the first to be prosecuted and facing the death penalty.
You say "Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic." His insincerity regarding everything except his love of self is no longer the stuff of OpEd pages; it is verifiable news.
Nothing will happen on the federal level to help those suffering from opioid addiction so long as Trump and his enablers in the House and Senate hold the reins.
Trump has defunded all federal government agencies except the military in accordance with his top advisor and son-in-law's government streamlining program in order to run the country like a banana republic. Money that would have gone to healthcare and social services will be now spent on fighting terrorism in the Middle East and building golf courses.
If we're going to execute drug dealers why not execute the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies that pumped these drugs out causing the Rx drug epidemic. We can also execute ceos of cigarette companies, and after them, those who manufacture junk food that causes terrible disease. I'm joking, of course. The problem is our President is actually serious about this insane proposal
147
Drug lords, whether from Latin America or the Corporate Suite have the same motivation- $$ Profits $$!. In the U.S. any chance of experiencing pain due to medical procedures get the patient a prescription of Oxy+Acetaminophen. What is even worse, the only option for getting rid of the drugs is "mix them in with" the cat's used litter and "tie up or seal" the bag - from the USDA'a web site!!!
1
The American justice system definitely categorizes criminal behavior and punishment in odd ways, one might daresay in inequitable ways.
Donald Trump and his cabinet are without doubt the least qualified people to be making policy decisions as they are so disconnected from reality in almost every area of governance. This is demonstrated by their failed approaches to everything from tax reform, healthcare, economics, national security, immigration and now the opioid crisis.
The death penalty doesn't deter murder, but Trump thinks it will deter drug addiction? Since the war on drugs began it has been a dismal failure. Addiction is a medical issue and has been treated criminally since it's inception.
No one told Trump that drugs coming into the nation take place at ports of entry and only a small percentage of them are brought across the border he thinks his wall will somehow stop? Where is the DEA? They should have told him.
Much like those here illegally simply overstayed their entry visas, Trump thinks they're massing on the Southern border and streaming across. Where is the Border Patrol? Shouldn't they have told him?
Everything this guy does is politically motivated and not thought out to serve the best interests of the country. And I mean everything. Even his reluctance to acknowledge Russian meddling in the election is self serving.
And through all this madness and damage to the nation, the Republican led congress is either silent or engaged in obstruction. Republicans and Trump are the most dangerous threats to our country and have to be removed as soon as is possible.
Trump doesn't appear to have learned much about anything in his 70-odd years. The Supreme Court will not authorize the death penalty for any crime short of murder. They have said as much.
Trump is so far out of his depth in the presidency that he can do little more than bluster. He takes credit for things he didn't do, he promises actions that will have great results, and he slashes the civil-service, the real army needed to roll out and operate programs. In New York, he inherited his daddy's experts and contacts, and even then, he managed to lose money. In the White House, he doesn't know how to build effective teams--in any case, why should he, since he's the only one who can solve all our problems? The voters did not buy a pig in a poke: the beast was on full display.
1
Drug addiction is complicated and what works for some is totally useless for others. Trump does not do complicated well if at all. Expecting any kind of workable solutions from him is nothing more than fantasy.
1
Opiods are a problem in this country, and they have been for a while. President Trump is focusing attention on this pernicious problem and proposing to take action to deal with the problem. No other President has done this; why bash Trump for it?
I suspect that the NYT and the Dems would bash Trump if he didn't do anything about opiods--whatever the President does or doesn't do, bash him for it.
This is not a good way to persuade voters to move to the Democratic camp. People have gotten wise to--and fed up with--the endless Trump bashing. If the Dems want to win the mid-terms and 2020 we have to present credible leadership and tell people what we can do for them and the country. Our negativity is wearing thin; we have much to offer if we can get our act together and take a positive message to the people.
1
Seriously? All the man has to do is propose any solution at all, no matter how preposterous, how useless, how completely unfit for the problem, and he's "done his job"? No, thanks. And "negativity"? Yes, your vaunted President's negativity is wearing thin.
1
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people..."
You are being very nice to him. When has he ever shown he is "sincere in his concern for people," at least people not named Trump? Examples, please.
3
As for the last paragraph, with its hopeful beginning, Mr. Trump is sincere in his concern for no one but himself.
2
Surprise! Trump has no solution just babble. He talks the talk, then forgets and moves on to another topic (most likely about him) and another target to insult (anybody but Putin). I find it amazing the benefit of the doubt he gets from his loyal subjects.
2
Legalizing cannabis would go along way to helping people manage chronic pain. It's not the be all, but it helps. It's a shame we as a nation are so provincial and mired in unworkable behaviors.
We just keep banging our head against the same wall and expecting different results.
1
"The president went on at length about his preposterous proposal to fight the scourge of drugs by executing drug dealers ..."
That sounds just like Mr. Duterte: executing drug dealers. How in the world did Trump think of that? A week ago, a photo ran in this paper of a Trump we don't ever see. He is warmly and respectfully greeting Duterte and his partner. In the Philippines tens of thousands of so-called drug dealers and addicts have been killed without trial or due process. Duterte claims to have killed several of them himself. I call that murder.
The photo and a pertinent editorial can be found at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/opinion/trump-dictators-human-rights....
1
If Trump really wants to go after the big time drug pushers, the Sackler family comes to mind. The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma which manufacturers and are the “pushers” of OxyContin. This drug is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and their company did everything to push their product. They became rich on the backs of opioid addicts and dead opioid addicts. Get tough with them first.
5
is it possible that the tons of drugs that come into the USA are carried through the desert from mexico? by people on foot, or by car? is it more likely that they are transported by plane and ship in broad daylight under the eyes of authorities who look the other way? re: the suggestion that drug dealers be executed reminds me that if we had no people there would be no garbage. Killing people is a bad solution to any problem.
3
Death for dealing in deadly drugs? First up should be PurduePharma's board and CEOs, who promulgated the myth that their opioid was not addictive, which lead to tens of thousands new addicts. Isn't that right Mr Rush Limblahblah?
2
It's probably to Trump's benefit more than to anyone else's that most of us don't believe that killing bad guys is a panacea.
1
What if we just let people live and die they way they want? The government can’t fix psychospiritual nihilism. Criminalization makes criminals of the simple buying and selling of a product. How many fewer overdose deaths were there bevif this was a legal market with regulated purity and labeling?
1
If Trump wants to "execute the drug dealers," he needs to look to the corporate leaders and boardrooms of the big pharma companies that knowingly produced these addicting drugs and promoted their use with doctors.
Doctors should have been told to prescribe physical therapy, not the addicting opioids pushed by the drug companies.
1
Has Mr. Trump addressed--or devoted much thought to--the despair, isolation and loneliness of many, most hard drug abusers? These people may not be looking to get high, they are seeking an escape from the low. Trump and others of his draconian, doctrinaire ilk are quick to cast blame on the usual culprits, which is in part a ploy to pull our attention from other, key players. That is, it's more self-service, like Republicans are so wont to do, tossing words to feed the illusion of genuine care and effective actions.
A real intention to remedy would begin with sharp rebukes to, and the threat of penalties against, multiple Big Pharma parties and certain agencies and areas of our own government. Some of them are corrupt and rotten. Mr. Trump would do well to consider that, with such huge money to be raked in, there is a general lack of empathy for the unemployed, the hopeless and wage slaves, who a large portion of opioid abusers. They have pain, alright. It's tragic in part because it's predatory; legal entities that should be fixing this crisis are some of those causing it. The miseries are mirrored by broke and broken industries and homes, the bleak infrastructure of so many corners of this land, and the acidic irony of social isolation in a nation that deems itself "united." This is not simply a matter of law enforcement policy or public health. It is a profound social and a spiritual crisis, about which Mr. Trump is apparently either clueless or indifferent.
Execute drug pushers? Trump has not thought this through properly. Since the opioid epidemic is largely down to the pharmaceutical companies and those doctors prescribing the stuff, he would have to shoot a lot of his golf buddies and many members of his clubs. Who will he play golf with?
1
Lecture for Trump:
Substance addiction is physical and psychological. The physical dependence may be temporarily disrupted by substance deprivation. The psychological dependence requires sustained professional therapy. Effective, though not fast and fail-proof, treatment is currently provided by a few private organizations.
Persecuting and prosecuting an addicted person will not cure his addiction. Strangling the legal pipeline for the substance, enacting absurd penalties for possession and distribution, and borrowing and spending lots of money will not solve the nation’s opioid crisis.
We need a pattern for effective treatment of opioid addiction before squandering billions of dollars on haphazard federal and state programs. Where does Dr. Carson and the 80,000 employees of the US Department of Health and Human Services stand on the issue? Why isn’t the CDC devising the treatment pattern?
But, since you’re willing to kill people, why not consider a “final solution” to the pesky problem? Just let the Enforcement Division of the HHS dump poison-laced opioid pills into the black market!
1
Anyone claiming Trump isn't doing anything about this is wrong. He just gave big pharma a HUGE tax break. That'll teach em.
2
His plans have my thoughts and prayers.
2
If Mr. Trump plans to seek a second term, someone should inform him that the demographic hit hardest by the opioid crisis is his base: lower middle class, less educated whites. That might cause this ego maniac to see a crisis of a different kind--one that affects him directly.
1
The execution of drug dealers is an option and is actually available under federal law if a death is attributed to the dealer. This is why the Mexicans always want the death penalty off the table as a possible sentence prior to their extradition of a "King Pin".
Congress could mandate thw death penalty or life in prison instead of making it a "possibility" under sentencing guidelines. Judges and of course the ACLU would have a stroke, but it's legally a possibility. But we won't do this because it would "disproportionately affect" certain segments of the population.
1
Trump's "Solution" to the opiod crisis reminds me of a statement of HL Mencken, that "for every problem there is a solution, so simple, so straightforward, it is obvious....and dead wrong". Beating the death penalty drum (and of course blaming people from outside the US for the problem) play to the anger running around in his base, and people love simple solutions. When you talk about drug treatment (which isn't straightforward, doesn't always work), when you talk about the flooding of the market with legal opiods, when you talk about economic dislocation and hopelessness, these require a lot more than a gut induced response, usually anger, they require complex solutions and trying all kinds of approaches that may or may not make sense. Middle America is angry that unlike the past, these are 'their kids', "real americans" aka the American working class (white) America, and unlike in the past when a lot of the anger was at 'those people' (the users), they want something done and killing drug dealers is emotionally appealing and simple....
1
I read a headline:
TRUMP MADE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING IN PANAMA: REPORT
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-drugs-corruption-panama-hotel-money-launde...
Trump also promised the death penalty for those who bring the heroin into our country, such as mega trafficker, that I presume would extend to money-launders enabling the drug cartels to function. This includes Trump.
Is it possible that Trump could become the first US president to ever be charged with a capital offence? With all the absurdity of this scenario, if Trump was convicted for narco financial crimes and was condemned to death, it would top all previous absurd scenarios, that brought Trump top TV ratings for his shenanigans. Since the Supreme Court has determined in the US, no one is above the law, and a US president can be sued for non-oficial crimes, like sexual harassment, I guess the execution of sitting a president for narco crimes would top all TV ratings and set unbreakable rating records for eternity.
Never underestimate Trump's deep desire for the highest and biggest TV ratings in the history of .... entertainment. Would this then be considered making the ultimate sacrifice for his country? Would that earn Trump a posthumous but purple heart? Where is Ionesco when we need him?
7
If Trump is serious about the opioid crisis in our country, why did he task two wholly unqualified people to solve the problem - Jared Kushner and Kellyanne Conway?
3
I hope that everyone concerned about the opioid epidemic will read this article for important background information:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-e...
1
A joke. More empty promises from a president who has done everything to undermine the Affordable Health Care Act to fight an epidemic, while piling on trillions in U.S. debt to underwrite more military spending.
AMERICA. Wake-up.
3
Drug addiction is a scourge whose impact goes well beyond the lost lives of chronic addicts and those who OD. Addiction is a family tragedy -- damaging the addicts' parents, siblings, and children. Sincere in his concern? That's way too charitable. Somehow Trump's endless expressions of his narcissistic tough guy persona cannot inure us from the man's sheer and fundamental lack of empathy.
1
Many comments here refer to “ Big Pharma” pushing opioids as the source of this problem but just a few companies make these drugs and the leader is Purdue. Yesterday, six MDs were indicted in NY who colluded with Purdue to push OxyContin. Reading the indictment is quite interesting, it was made public yesterday. So if we want to start with the dealers, we should arrest the Sackler brothers who own Purdue, who, BTW, are both MDs.
Trump, season 2 is shaping up to be a ratings winner. Season one had intrigue, with competing White House voices striving for the inexperienced president's ear, backstabbing and leaking to bolster their own influence and undercut that of others. Season 2 focuses on shock value and features a long and growing list of released staff and an unfettered president ready to go with his vaunted gut. Emulating vicious strongman leaders on executions, offering congratulation to a rival power's sham election winner and a gloves off assault on the special council investigation. Thrills and chills. What will he do next? Stay tuned, America!
The saddest and most frightening aspect of Trump's presidency is that the single most avid consumer of the non-stop headlines is Trump himself. The absurdity of this vicious circle is almost too bizarre to believe. Trump is helplessly addicted to media attention. As president, everything he does generates media attention. Trump says and does things to generate a media reaction, and then spends hours every day watching the media coverage of himself. It's like giving an addict unlimited access to drugs, except that the inevitable crash affects not the user, but the entire nation and potentially the rest of the world.
1
We shouldn’t discount the fact that many people are craving relief from real physical pain. There are effective alternatives to opioids for pain relief: physical therapy and chiropractics, cannabis, stress reduction training, Pilates and yoga, anti-inflammatories, to name some. We can’t just ignore the cause for many people to get introduced to opioids in the first place and our laws and medical care need reforms so that we have effective alternatives for treating pain beyond prescribing addictive pills.
2
We have known for years opioids are addictive despite what pharmaceutical companies would have us believe (Demerol was first marketed as a non-addictive pain killer).
I suspect root cause analysis would show us the problem is why people become users in the first place. What is it about their lives making them wish for augmented reality? When life itself is insufficiently good, we look for relief where we believe we might find it. Whether tobacco, alcohol, sex, work, gambling or opiates, a large segment of the population with addictive brain wiring will seize one or more of these substances or activities with a literal death grip. The difference with opiates is their low therapeutic index--the amount to kill you is just slightly more than the amount to give you a "high". And the newest agents, fentanyl and its more powerful cousin carfentanyl, are more lethal yet.
Historically, drug sellers have not wished to kill their customers. In the 1940's an epidemic of malaria in IV drug users sharing needles (and malarial parasites) was first addressed by cutting the heroin sold with quinine, a chemical with anti-malarial properties.
Our way through this mess will come with the application of the tools of epidemiology and not by "shooting from the lip" as Mr. Trump does. Like Dr. Snow in the London cholera outbreak, first we find the cases, then we trace their source and finally we remove the pump handle at the infected well. We have work to do.
1
Trump's warped view of who is becoming addicted - and why, ignores the reality of how drug companies are complicit in this crisis. Remember the tobacco companies and their false claims about the effects of smoking and lung cancer? A lawsuit or two finally forced their hand in 'fessing up. Milwaukee County has taken the bull by the horns and is suing drug companies who control 85% of the prescription opioid distribution market in the U.S.
Now THAT'S how to stem the flow of drugs - not some goofy wall erected along our southern border.
1
If Trump is counting as "drug dealers" the physicians who over-prescribe opiods and the pharmacists who fill prescriptions they know are off the charts, then we've got a wild ride ahead of us.
Of course, Trump didn't stop to think before he made his statement.
No surprise there.
Please hurry, Mr. Mueller.
1
I teach epidemiology as a high school elective and I have 14 adolescents who, off the top of their head, could refute his entire speech with evidence-based research.
1
Enact the death penalty for drug dealers of opiates and equivalent pain killing drugs as long as the drug company executives who made the decisions to have their sales force lie to physicians and push these drugs are executed as well.
If Mr. Trump was sincere (and, why does the media continue to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is?) he would take the 15, or 20, or 30, or who-knows-how-many millions of dollars he plans to spend on his big parade to honor himself so he can pretend he's a potentate and put it toward expanding the number of beds in treatment facilities in the hardest-hit addiction cities. At least that would be helpful, something that his lame "plan" will not be.
1
"Trump may be sincere..."
It is time for the Times and other real news organizations to abandon the pretense of objectiveness and even-handedness when reporting on this vile administration.
Trump's only legislative accomplishment since his inauguration was a massive tax cut for the wealthy, which will result in a massive cut in resources like Medicaid, which are the only bulwark against addiction for millions of working poor Americans.
2
The bottom line is that there are legitimate users of this drug who are in chronic pain and depend on it for relief so they can live some semblance of a normal life and then there are people who use it as a recreational drug or to alleviate mental pain from their unhappy lives. If you take this drug off the market, you will be punishing and damaging legitimate users. Very few recreational users on their own will take advantage of drug addiction centers. They will instead turn to the black market created by drug dealers to make them even richer. There must be an intelligent, well-thought-out answer that takes all the facts into consideration. The Trump Administration responds with only impulsive, easy, politically charged reactions to problems.
64
Thank you, Wally. I am one of those dependent-not addicted--on medical opiods, prescribed and tightly managed by a pain clinic, to control chronic pain. Without that medication, I would likely be bed-bound. There are millions like me, and we all fear what could well happen when uninformed politicians Standing Tall Against Drugs end our ability to get the meds we genuinely need. Anyone legislating in this field should experience what chronic pain feels like--say, 9 on a 10-scale. It's not pleasant.
8
Yes, yes, yes. The chronic pain patients are having their medications yanked away from them with no adequate substitutions offered. The pain management doctors are so afraid of legal reprisals against them for prescribing opiates to their chronic pain patients that they are unceremoniously dropping their patients' necessary care.
The people who started the "no-opioid" hysteria did so without good scientific data. It was a purely emotional and simplistic response to a very complicated situation that affects many innocent, non-drug-abusing pain patients.
I know quite a few chronic pain patients, and even in their despair they have not yet started turning to black-market sources for pain relief. Instead, some have started killing themselves.
If despair and suicide are what they're trying to promote, the "no-opioid" crowd is doing a great job with their knee-jerk, hysterical reactions to other people's pain.
4
Yes, there are legitimate users, and I thank you for acknowledging this. Unfortunately, many will not survive and are killing themselves as we speak due to the legislature laws now placed on doctors. This is a sad state of affairs.
Once again:
"Law-abiding Immigrants" are not "at risk of being detained or deported." Those who are at risk are those breaking the law just by remaining here, and they are therefore not "law-abiding".
Conflating immigrants who are here legally with those who are not is a tactic that the media seem determined not to relinquish. It renders their discussions relating to immigration quite unpersuasive.
2
Drug addiction isn't a moral failing, it is an illness. It is taking the lives of children, parents, brothers, and sisters. People who are addicted need medical help and as strong support system. Scary commercials is a waste of money and could be better spent helping people get into treatment and follow up care. And let's not forget that Obama sought an extra $1 million of funding from Congress in 2016 to educate doctors and patients and for treatment. States could do a lot more on their own but it's sad many have refused to crack down on pill mills and unscrupulous doctors who prescribe opioids like candy. Cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran's benefits isn't going to help people get better, it's just going to lead to more heartache for many American families.
3
Blaming people will not help them recover from whatever led them into addiction. Anger does not help a person recover. Trump learned nothing from his own experience in his family...nor his own addiction to excitement in all his affairs.
Like the olde "just say no" Campaign, it will be a waste of money given to broadcast companies rather than funding to emergency rooms and school based social workers who can aid families. Sigh
8
What about the legitimate chronic pain sufferers for whom there is no substitute for opioids? There is no high, only temporary relief so these patients can function. There is no addiction. Please don't take opioids away from chronic pain sufferers who need them.
6
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
Sorry, no. The man is not concerned about other people,period.
16
You know that for sure?
1
The "opioid epidemic" may have been stimulated by over-prescription of legal painkillers. But before the current opioids we had a methamphetamine epidemic, and before that we had a crack cocaine epidemic, which was preceded by a heroin epidemic, and a tranquilizer epidemic, a sleeping pill epidemic, another amphetamine epidemic (little white pills and black beauties),
and so on. And through all that time, a steady storm of alcohol addiction.
Targeting opioid dealers will be just as ineffective as targeting the dealers in the earlier waves.
Drug use is a social problem, it's a symptom, not the disease. If you want to reduce drug use, you have to look at the social causes. And then you have to address them. Indian reservations would be a good place to start, because the problems are acute there yet the populations are small enough that we could hope to make progress, and learn how to expand the progress outward.
11
Let me know when we are going to execute any of those medical Doctors writing thousands of prescriptions for opioids that flood the supply in places like West Virginia.
Or execute the pharmacists that fill all those prescriptions.
This isn't just a street drug crisis with "pushers" working urban corners. Who has more "blood" on their hands--the small-time dealer or Big Pharma? Who are the real "drug lords" in the opioid world?
43
Doctors and Nurse Practitioners who oversubscribe narcotics need to loose their license after they fail to answer to their licensing boards.With current technology we can identify the drug mills that give meds to too many patients a day that would be consistent with good care.Charging a hundred dollars for a five minute visit no test and 3000 dollars worth of drugs on the street is not unethical but should be a crime.
1
The only way to solve this problem is to reduce the early misery that drives addiction.
The underlying problem is lack of emotional self-regulation skills. These skills are learned in very early life (or not), from parents who help, soothe, and comfort the child, by which the child learns to do this for themselves. Consistent, safe, caring parenting is key to acquiring this skill. Abused kids do not learn it.
Addicts have suffered a great deal as children, often lack close relationships with people, and who do not have functioning self regulation skills. They have a lot of psychic pain, and no way to modulate it without a substance.
Emotional pain is the root of opioids. To reduce child suffering in America would actually address the root cause of opioids. We need to put the resources towards shoring up vulnerable kids.
To create happy people, impervious to addiction, we must clearly articulate the needs of small babies, and promote policies that encourage secure attachment, especially focusing on vulnerable new families. The Nurse-Family partnership is a model for what works.
12
Addiction is a disease that has a clinical progression. It can uproot the stablest of lives very quickly. It’s unmercifulness does not trifle with emotional particulars. Emotional instability and physical pain may lead someone to seek comfort through drugs. So can unparalleled success. But it’s the impact of drugs on the brain that feed the irresistible urge to use. Few playing fields are as level.
2
Given the logic of the president's proposal to execute drug dealers, should we be examining the use of the death penalty for pharmaceutical executives who have flooded the market with opioids, and doctors who over-prescribe pain killers?
26
But at least President Trump has addressed the issue and started the discussion.
Obama was absent from any discussion or consideration of this crisis, despite the fact that the crisis was escalating exponentially during his tenure. Sad.
4
You seem to forget that under Obama, not only the Affordable Health Care Act was put into place, but he actually signed an Opioid Legislation addressing the matter -- THAT was taking action.
All Trump has done so far is bluster about it and hasn't even put enough funding in reserve to battle this crisis effectively.
Try again.
28
Obama was trying to extend health care to all Americans. When that happens then there is a chance of dealing with the abuse crisis. Trump has not got the foggiest notion of what addiction is about. If he did,he would be "addressing" the issue, not tossing out inane ideas to make it look like he is doing something when he is not.
2
If the crisis had indeed been increasing "exponentially, how might Obama have been aware of it?
1
This most important issue under Trump's wing will morph itself to the land of nowhere just like DACA, GUN REGULATION, HEALTH CARE< and any other subject which falls into the ditch as the presidential limo to lala land rolls past.
Bluster should be replaced by incompetence the real reason nothing is being done in Washington to improve the lives of all American's!
16
“Are there no more prisons; Workhouses?” –Scrooge, 1843
I’ve lived in a “crack neighborhood” for thirty years. Crack has been a relief from the heroin epidemic of the 70’s which should give you an indication of how bad heroin was as the dope of choice.
It was so bad that even the anti-dope crusaders were amenable to legalizing dope the way whiskey and tobacco are. The huge profits were cited as a source of revenue for dying cities. Legalizing dope would put the profits into the hands of people who could legitimately recirculate the wealth. The dope-dealers supplied a few jobs but there was no serious “trickle-down” effect of their enormous wealth. The conspicuous consumption of cars and cloths couldn’t sustain even the retailers of such products.
But the clamor against legalization drowned out the cries against the presence of dope.
It turns out, those arguing for the legalization of dope were correct. Big Pharma created legal dope (now called “opioids”) and made enormous profits. Crime (at least at the manufacturing level) was non-existent and the middle-men were legitimate—hospitals, physicians and pharmacists.
Now, like the Wall Street bailout, the legitimate manufacturers and distributors will get billions of dollars to cushion the effects of reducing demand.
The billions spent during the 70’s “opioid” crisis went into infrastructure development (jails), armaments (for the police) and public service (methadone clinics).
Real progress America.
28
Big Pharma also has the gall to advertise drugs on television explicitly to mitigate the side effects of opiates. They make money no matter what and they don't care about the consequences as long as they sell drugs.
1
"Mr. Trump might be sincere"? Great article but time to stop giving him the benefit of doubt of being sincere; it is all political stunt. His doing nothing speaks volumes about his lack of sincerity. It is time to stop hedging.
37
Obama is the one who did nothing, while the opioid crises grew exponentially every year. Sad.
insanity may be defined as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
5
Unless someone can tell me what exactly IS the recommended daily dose of heroin, an 'opioid overdose' is a misnomer.
Ithaca, NY takes the opioid use so seriously it wants to install "safe injection sites" around the city so that drug-taking criminals can be protected from themselves. Now THAT is truly absurd.
According to the sales pitch, these "safe injection sites" will have a nurse on hand to administer NARCAN in case these volunteer opioid users take too much or the wrong type. That is also truly absurd.
The "safe injection sites" will also have a 'chill room' where users can hang out afterward....essentially recreating a classic opium den. The chill room will also have literature on how to safely smoke crack cocaine. That is doubly absurd.
My nephew is a State Trooper. He now has to carry NARCAN on his belt for illegal drug users who overdose. Not insulin for diabetic citizens, not an EpiPen for allergic citizens, not nitroglycerin for cardiac citizens. Only NARCAN to help criminal drug users. That is also absurd.
9
Why are these safe injection sites absurd if they save lives? They are also usually tied to treatment programs. As I said in another comment, you can’t treat a dead addict.
3
Calling people who are addicted to drugs "criminals" is derogatory in the truest sense. These people are sick the way diabetics and heart patients are. The difference is that they are viewed as "criminals" and don't get the help they need. AIDS patients were once viewed through your same narrow lens.
2
In the USA, opiod abuse is caused in part by chronic back pain following failed surgery. Americans turn far too easily to surgery for back problems – then pay for their mistake for the rest of their days.
'New data from, Amino, a consumer healthcare company, points to a big reason why curbing opioid abuse is such a challenge.
Amino took a look at the 3.1 million people diagnosed with opioid use disorder and one other condition between 2014 and 2016. It found that patients with opioid use disorder were 7.2 times more frequently also diagnosed with failed back syndrome — the general term for chronic pain following back surgery — than those who weren’t diagnosed with opioid use disorder.
Other back and spine conditions were also linked with a higher rate of opioid use disorder diagnoses.'
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chronic-back-and-spine-pain-and-opioi...
5
I am of two minds...on one hand, I want to know what the "president" says so that his destructive residence in the White House does not hide in the shadows, and on the other hand, what he says is so far from reality that it might as well be an episode from something produced as entertainment. Oh yeah, the Opioid Epidemic is a real threat and we're gonna spend billions to fight it. But, to get that money, we're going to cut Medicaid (which currently supports REAL programs to help addiction), try to get death penalties for drug traffickers (Did you forget that it is Big Pharma that exploded the use of it in the first place) and BUILD THAT WALL. The headline here is true...Trump is all bluster. One can only hope that the dedicated civil servants who work tirelessly will find programs that can help those hurt by the proliferation of misused drugs. And that they can stay under Trump's radar lest he decide he needs loyalty pledges from them or face being fired.
14
"there is no good evidence that capital punishment deters crime"
This statement presumes that facts matter. Our government does not care about facts. Truth is quaint notion from a bygone era.
4
There is, however, ample evidence that it prevents recidivism.
1
executing drug dealers is just a way for Trump to sound tough.
but as with school shootings, he places the blame--and the solution--on the wrong problem.
Opioid addiction requires a multifactorial approach focusing on the addict. There's no money for that when serving the goals of the wealthy with tax cuts is higher priority than breaking the chain of addiction.
Twice as many people die every year from drug overdoses as those from gun violence because we don't attack the problems of supply and demand at the source.
As a result, all we get is "tears and prayers" for gun deaths and a whacky plan to execute pushers instead of treating desperate addicts.
As usual, Trump says he wants to fix a problem when in reality, he's just showing off.
18
I attended a wake for a young man today. As bright a fellow as I have ever met, felled by opioids.
As anyone who works with addicts knows, recovery is a challenge that only some percentage of users will manage. That doesn't make it any less important to try. These are our citizens that are dying.
Meanwhile, Trump panders. He knows nothing about the subject, is unwilling to learn, and won't bring expertise to bear on the subject. He'll make a bunch of "get tough" noise - purposeless bluster that wouldn't make a bit of difference, even if he bothered to put some detail behind it.
We are leaderless.
348
We are not leaderless. You are responding to a column about Trump's proposals. Until about 14 months ago, we were leaderless. What were Obama's recommendations? Zippo.
1
The % of people who stop using narcotics is very small.
Once addicted, it's pretty much over. That is just the reality.
trump doesn't read or listen to people who do. He has made ignorance, bigotry and lying OK!...at least to his devoted followers....who he has stuck it to repeatedly in his past life! It boggles my mind how he can fool so many.
I was personally thrilled to hear of the plan to execute drug dealers. It would only take the executions of a couple of pharma executives and doctors pushing oxycontin to reduce the terrible impact of prescription opiates.
31
As 70s college students we had and did lots of recreational drugs, at the time the abuse was often pursued as, "awareness expansion." Hard drug use for physical gratification (or escape) was looked down upon as against the ethic of drug experimentation for enlightenment. In the process we read many books on the subject of counter culture and getting high.
The one book of many written at the time that stands out in my mind, for setting in concrete the irreversible danger of heroin and needles was, “Licit and Illicit Drugs,” Edward M. Brecher. It still stands today (according to experts) as a landmark work on most every aspect of drug abuse in America. It addresses succinctly some very heavy unchanged, but apparently as yet unlearned, facts about the true nature of the heroin problem.
“Licit and Illicit Drugs,” is now in the public domain, people would be well advised to review chapters 10-20 of the opiates section to shake off some popular myths of today, including the myth of non-drug based treatment programs:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm
No the book is not out of date because it is old. It's review of addiction as a permanent thing, untreatable without opiates or substitutes, is as true today as when it was written. I advise people please take a look and pass it on. I know what an invaluable service the book did me, and believe it could be very helpful for today's young people experimenting with chemicals.
9
Start first with treatment.
Make antidotes widely available and if you want a war on anything, how about we fight the cost of the Narcan shot which skyrocketed once police forces and fire departments started buying it. Make the drugs clinics use to treat opioids more affordable and fund the clinics. Save lives first.
Then lets get serious about the causes. Over-prescription is one, because some people do not tolerate opioids without feeling the intense high. But even beyond that, look to the social causes of addiction, and address them. People self medicate for a reason.
What won't work is filling the jails with low level dealers in the chain; or trying to do the old "This is your brain in drugs" campaign. We've done all that and cycled from heroin, to cocaine, to crack, to meth and back to heroin. What drives supply is availability and cost and profitability.
Any policy would need to drive a broad set of actions. We are not working with people who have the imagination or the experience to implement them.
7
As to the price of Narcan, it should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied classic economics that once a product has higher demand due to more users, the price increases.
The Times appears more focused on the real issues of Opiod abuse than Mr. Trump. Calling Trump out for his inability to absorb anything other than the most superficial sound bite on any given issue unfortunately does nothing to alleviate the recognition that we are all stuck with him for the foreseeable. And there is nothing to suggest that he or his Republican enablers will do anything of consequence on any issue other than enriching themselves at public expense.
The only problem that Trump is focused on is making Trump feel better. And macho posturing is his apparent solution. For the rest of us, it is time to leave Trump to Mr. Mueller and focus on what we, as the most powerful nation on the planet, can do in the absence of meaningful federal leadership and assistance to address the problem. Surely there are private sector leaders with the intellect, resources, and leadership skills to step up and take on the issue. America waits while Washington sleeps.
10
These numbers, 64, 000 deaths, is about 20,000 higher than 481 x 50, also 1,280 would be the average per state using 64,000 deaths in 2016.
Tom Franzson Brevard NC
1
Just a couple of points I feel compelled to make. First, 20,000 is clearly way off the mark for which you were reaching. Second, using 'average per state' makes little mathematical sense. You should be using per capita numbers.
1
I noticed this also but the hard hit state of New Hampshire is 481 deaths per state population. Obviously 481 in the state of California would be a different problem.
Everything Mr. Trump speaks about is thin on details, and not well thought out. We are still waiting for his plan to have the best medical insurance in the world, aren't we?
39
I find it fascinating how people ignore drug dealing in our schools and want to put the onus on MD's prescribing as the root cause of addictions. When my kids were in school they said drugs were everywhere - and these were not prescriptions taken from Mom/Dad's medicine cabinet. They all left the area when they graduated and a friend who's son is now in the same school is bemoaning the issue - but even at a higher level - teachers don't even know what to do anymore as so many kids are using. We are a top 1% school district according to the NYT article last Fall - this is not inner city. I can't even imagine what it's like there.
11
MDs prescribing most certainly do play a role. People like to talk about gateway drugs, but an opioid prescription from a doctor is a fare surer gateway to addiction than, say, an ounce of marijuana. In addition, these prescribed, legally obtained medications do often make it out into the wild to be sold illicitly.
3
Yes, drugs are common even in 'the best schools". However, that doesn't negate the fact that the opiod epidemic is tried to the heavy use of prescription opiods. Besides kids stealing them from parents, legal opiods often end up in black market uses. Worse, because of those prescriptions, people get hooked on opiods, then switch to easier to get/cheaper illegal opiods like heroin.
So you want the same old failed solutions?
The USA is one of only two countries in the world that allow TV advertising of prescription drugs. We in Canada are confronted daily by the contrast between US-sourced and Canadian-sourced TV - the level of advertising for drugs on American television is off-the-charts.
Maybe, everyone should start with reforming that policy - the nice thing about it is that it would not cost any government money. Of course, the media companies would be howling. But then again, the media spending could be replaced by election advertising.
60
Not only is this a great idea, but it meshes with the professed desire on the part of Trumpski and his supporters to "make America great again", meaning to return to a better time. Bearing in mind that it wasn't always possible for drugs to be advertised on TV, banning those ads would be one way to do just that. When my wife and I were growing up, there were no such ads on TV or in print. So the question is whether Trumpski really wants to walk the walk, or just talk the talk.
12
Eh, back in the day TV advertising wasn't better. Instead of ads for drugs to cure dire (or just annoying) conditions, we had ads--on TV, radio, and in print--for cigarettes. At least now we don't have TV ads extolling the virtues of cigarettes.
1
We could reform ( with a maul ) ads for
ambulance chasers
prescription drugs
alcohol
farm chemicals
elections
I`d like to go back to the days of soap but going back is not the answer and soap is now part and parcel of Big Chem.
Just need to say that an overwhelming number of commenters here (clearly there are some exceptions) and in response to a very important article about the war on Iraq in yesterday's paper have been extremely insightful and serious. Feels good and hopeful reading them.
12
I am a big believer that people in extreme pain should not suffer because other people are uncomfortable with drug use. I support the legalization of marijuana, which would help many people deal with all sorts of pain, physical and psychological. Stronger drugs, like opioids, should be used for severe injury, chronic severe pain, and cancer pain relief. Doctors should prescribe the minimum for relief. The rest is about personal responsibility. Life is not pain free. Pain should be managed, but only in the case of end of life care should it be illiminated. Everyone else has to learn to deal with some discomfort as they seek relief that doesn't prevent them from working and or going about their daily life. I recently had a very painful back spasm that sent me to the hospital. I did not seek opioids but rather a less powerful prescription pain relief which also carries the risk of addiction. I took the minimum dose which did not eliminate pain but made it managable. After three days I felt side effects and decided to try going without, and it worked. I am not pain free, but I am also not addicted to the medicine that was prescribed. Personal responsibility. I thought that was a GOP idol.
12
I've used prescription opiods to treat arthritis pain for four years in addition to non opioid pain relievers (all three of which cause organ damage) and other treatments too numerous to mention here. They do not get me high but allow me to maintain a partially active lifestyle. Exactly how much more pain do you want me to deal with? Will my increased suffering help you feel better about doing something to stop others from abusing opiods?
7
My nephew was killed by a driver who was on prescribed medication for pain. A woman, in her seventies, regularly smokes marijuana and drives -- which amuses her friend, my sister, who was the mother of my dead nephew.
What "personal responsibility" do you see around us, MJ? Look more closely.
1
Man has been altering his mind since the beginning of time it's in our DNA and it's a stronger urge in some more than others. Finding out why it effects some and not others is one of the answer which means more medical research. Also the expansion of treatment centers as well as the ACA. With the ACA insurance companies would only be reimbursed twice so Dr's would think twice before prescribing and this would preventing opioids pharmacies from popping up. Also we as citizens need to rethink this, why go after the little guys pushing the drugs go after the ones that are bringing large quantities into this country and put sanctions on countries like Mexico or Central America if they don't start playing a bigger role. Also make sure all border entry points as well as airports and harbors have up dated equipment like scanners and that they always work.
1
Do you think trained dogs might play a role in locating incoming drugs?
Portugal had the highest rate of opioid deaths in Europe ten years ago. Now they have one of the lowest. The solution: Portugal decriminalized the personal use and possession (but not the sale) of drugs. This allowed addicts to seek treatment without fear of arrest. Done.
80
The solution is potentially easy: Take the profit out of illicit drugs. Have the federal government dispense clinically-clean drugs to addicts for no cost that is dispensed at government-managed clinics. Make it illegal NOT to use government-supplied drugs by putting addicts in jail not for moths or years but for a few days at a time so that punishment can be given out often. I would think users would simply gravitate to government-managed dispensaries simply because its easier.
Playing games as we have since 1970 has gotten our country no where. While I know critics will say is cave-in to drug use but if the only place one can safely and reasonably acquire and use the drugs is at government-controlled facilities and the drug trade cannot profit at great cost to our society, the users will have access to health care. There will be greater potential for kicking addiction and the bad guys who sell drugs will have to do something else for the big money the illicit drug trade so amply provides.
I think this approach may very save our country money, too. No more border agents, half of city police departments, jets and and expensive equipment will be so greatly needed and our courts and jails will shrink at well. If would not hurt to know that Mexico won't see 10,00 people die each year in that country's illicit drug trade.
Or, we can just keep doing the same things for the past 50 years. .
14
In those states that have legalized marijuana CDC has seen a 16% increase in car-pedestrian accidents. In states where marijuana is still illegal, car-pedestrian accidents have gone down.
Legalizing a deadly habit does not save anyone.
4
Because of legalization, my teenagers think marijuana is totally safe, even beneficial. That is the current marketing, but is one sided. I am speaking from experience. It seems to me the legalization movement is no more than a money grab by the government and investors. And, why would we legalize another carcinogen?
1
@Georgi,
I finally tracked down your 16%. That’s not data from the CDC, it’s data from a Governors Highway Safety Administration report prepared for them by a consulting agency.
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/pedestrians_18.pdf
I will point out to you that a 16% increase in a number that is already small (pedestrian deaths are small relative to total traffic deaths) over a relatively small amount of time (6 months of 2017 compared to 6 months of the previous year) is not robust data. It’s nothing more than a metric to be aware of, and the authors of the report acknowledge that.
2
We all need to remember when the "drug problem" was confined to the African American community, it wasn't so much of an issue. Now that it has affected white American communities, boom it's an epidemic that needs urgent attention. Just like gun violence. If the answer is the death penalty for dealers, does that mean a doctor or PA or NP who overprescribes opiods or sells opioid prescriptions should also get the death penalty? There was a doctor a few years ago in my city who was selling them out the front door of his home. And what about pharmaceutical companies who flood an area with opiods way out if proportion to the size if the community. There will be NO equivalent punishment to those "dealers". That would certainly send a message if there was.
18
Of course, we should also recognize that it was *never* confined to African American communities. That idea was used primarily to scare white Americans into following along with the agenda of those seeking to ban certain substances.
You want to ban one substance that is a massive cause of public health problems? Go after alcohol. Of course, the last time we tried that it created a massive organized crime problem which is still with us many decades after the repeal of prohibition in the first place.
One can imagine that Trump's and Session's opioid bluster is more about putting minorities in prison than about helping the victims. It fits right in with the Just-Say-No gambit of the Reagan Administration.
32
Treatment can help an addict manage his addiction. But total recovery is relatively rare. In the past, this contributed to the emphasis upon imprisonment. Today lots of folks talk mainly of treatment. The fact of the matter is that the opioid crisis is both a health and a criminal problem. Resources need to go to both.
3
Most of you do not remember the heroin crisis if the 1950s, or even the cocaine one of the 1990s, repressive laws did noting but fill up the jails with mentally disturbed people, and made the dealers richer. Prohibition gave us Cosa Nostra, murders and a law breaking public.
To break this scourge, we need to find out why people have a need to even get started on drugs, what psychological desire even gets them started. I had a shoulder replacement a while back, I was prescribed an oxeycodone, it did help me sleep, but it also made me nauseous. I kept cutting the pills i half and got off them in a few weeks.
So I am one of those people that have a adverse reaction to them. One time I dislocated my elbow, after it was pulled back in place I was given morphine, it made me sick and I barfed soon after. These addicts take these drugs to gt high, we know that, but it will take some serious studies to determine why they want to get high.
I know getting high has its fun like going to parties in North Beach in the 50s, but with weed it is over in the morning, except some have to keep it up, Why? What drives them to it? Is it psychological or psychophysical, they need help, not jail.
20
Why do you drink alcohol?
What if you had an adverse reaction to alcohol, but had a mild ... pleasant reaction to opiates?
What we need to do is re-evaluate the prohibition of lifestyle choices ... why does it matter if I take cocaine or heroin? Does it affect you in any way shape or form?
The related crime seems almost entirely related to the fact these things are prohibited.
Likewise the vast amount of health risks from these drugs is related to their prohibition ... and the fact that users have little control over the purity or safety of the drugs they take. While if someone could buy 10% heroin tablets at the pharmacy the odds of overdosing accidentally drop to 0 ... buying 100% fentanyl from a drug dealer puts you at a very serious risk.
Prohibition is the problem not the solution ... and figuring out why people take drugs? Trying to stop them? cure them? It's just absurd.
Do we try and stop people from being homosexual? Cure them?
We used to, but it's become very clear just how wrong that was. The same is true of our treatment of those who *choose* to use prohibited drugs.
2
it's called "opioid induced euphoria". it's a side effect of opioid analgesics but not of NSAIDs.
1
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
Unlikely. Equivocations like this one normalize a person who should not be given the benefit of the doubt at this point. This kind of device is used too often... please find more direct ways to draw to a conclusion.
81
I have found myself wondering how many opioid prescriptions are written by doctors in order to avoid recommending more expensive treatments -- like surgery -- to patients with chronic pain problems. Insurance will often refuse to cover the cost of decisive (but more expensive) treatments like surgery, but will cover repeated, less expensive courses of palliatives like painkillers.
If we were willing to pay for treatments that effectively address the underlying causes of chronic pain (e.g., poor dental health, injured or deteriorating spinal disks), rather than just throwing painkillers at the symptoms, my guess is that we would have much less of an opioid crisis on our national hands.
Of course, that's a big "if," and one that's not likely to be addressed under the current administration and its allies in Congress. But something to think about nonetheless.
24
Far from it- data from multiple large trials examining the surgical treatment of low back pain have been disappointing. There are of course exceptions, but the vast majority of patients with chronic pain don’t have a procedural quick fix to turn to, whatever the cost.
Surgery for back problems isn't a cure. In fact for the vast majority of patients it will make the pain worse.
The very cutting edge for surgery in spine patients is preventing further physical disability. There is no surgery for serious spine pain that has any positive effect on that pain.
Any doctor who tells you otherwise should be considered a quack ... a charlatan.
Likewise why do you care how someone decides to treat their pain? I'm not sure how it could possibly affect the quality of *your* life .. though I certainly understand how it would affect the quality of their life.
It makes no sense that we are completely okay with a cancer patient treating their pain with a narcotic, but someone who has to live 40 years with pain just as or more intense shouldn't be allowed to have that pain relieved? merely because ... what? they are going to live?
Is cancer pain magical? Morphine isn't a treatment for cancer or death. It's a treatment for pain ... and pain does not discriminate. It does not care whether you are going to have to "live" your entire life disabled by it ... it doesn't care that you are going to die in 2 weeks.
Though right now it seems we only acknowledge pain in the context of an imminent death, pain does not work that way. It will destroy your 30 years of your life just as easily as it will destroy 30 seconds of it ... and no one ... *no one* should be able to tell you whether or not you should be *allowed* to LIVE without that pain.
3
back surgery for the relief of chronic pain in the absence of objective neurologic deficits is not statistically successful. 20% are improved subjectively, but not as far as return to work if disabled or use of painkillers is concerned, the rest are worse off or unchanged. I would like to see some data showing that insurance companies would deny back surgery in the face of neurologic deficit (foot drop, radicular pain, loss of feeling in an extremity, objective weakness for example) whether back pain was present or not. I would wager that f you took 100 healthy people with no history of back pain age 50 or greater (if such people actually exist) and did MRIs of their backs 75% at least will show evidence of disc disease. It's that common.
There is one good way of alleviating the drug problem. Legalise heroin immediately. Other countries have shown that decriminalising drugs has reduced the number of new addicts, and it has lowered the rate of new cases of HIV and other infections. Legalising drugs would cut the feet from the drug dealers market, and would allow users to obtain medicinal quality drugs, which are very much safer, especially as their dosage can be measured. They also would have the advantage of not being contaminated by Fentanyl, Carfentanil, and other powerful opioids.
The war on drugs has failed.
Please can we not get on with trying a different approach, which has evidence of success on its side.
37
James:
You stated the reason that American politicians will never learn from other countries who have greatly reduced addiction and crime.
"Leagalising drugs would cut the feet from the drug dealers market..."
Such a result would harm the cash flow of the police, politicians, and the thousands of professionals who are dependent on the drug market for their very existence.
26
The Wall won’t stop drugs such as fentanyl, most of which is manufactured in China; and if customs could somehow stem that flow, it would just be picked up in the US, at a higher price. In the era of synthetic drugs (including meth), everything could be locally sourced, just as Trump would like it
26
I'm not suggesting that the Opiod Epidemic doesn't deserve attention, it most certainly does. 64,000 people is a lot of people. But if you look at leading causes of death in the Unites States it doesn't rank very high. Depending on how the numbers are crunched it sits at 4th or 6th. The bulk of the top 10 leading causes are still related to smoking, so while youngsters may not be picking up the cancer sticks like their parents and grandparents before them, it will be years before (sorry to say it) those of us who did smoke quit influencing those numbers. Also, a good half of the top 10 ten can be strongly linked to diet, weight and a sedentary lifestyle. And with studies showing that the US just keeps getting fatter and fatter and more and more sedentary, maybe we should be looking at that? But no one in politics seems to want to address these issues by gunning down cigarette manufacturers or junk food makers. Or is it just that we would have to blame ourselves for the smokes, the junk food and the sedentary behavior where a war on opiods lets us wage WAR on minorities and blame doctors and drug company executives?
37
“where a war on opiods lets us wage WAR on minorities and blame doctors and drug company executives?”
My friend, just because it is used to wage war on minorities does not excuse the doctors or the pharmaceuticals. After all, the victims of the latter are largely non-minorities.
1
Anyone who thinks hard drug addiction deaths are not a national emergency not only has ice in their veins, but rocks in their head.
2
Except that overeating and smoking take decades to kill you, Fentanyl will kill you this afternoon.
2
I thought it was the doctors pushing the opioids, no?
7
EC
No, doctors are a necessary element of the epidemic, but only part of the growing market.
5
As in many other areas of life in these united states, the crisis in the misuse of prescription pain meds is too complex to pull apart--the pushers are doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, CEO's, the ball of yarn is one that, one thread pulled will start an avalanche. The folks who profit from this won't let that happen. This is our health system. We could talk about our money management system just as well--banks, mortgage lenders, stockbrokers. It is a frightening situation because no matter what we want to reform, we face a behemoth with a million eyes. I know that decades of greed and power-grabbing have contributed, but it does sometimes seems that it got much worse, much fast. Those insurance companies aren't going to pay for treatment. Those days are over.
6
Meanwhile, people like my mother, who suffered horribly before dying of cancer, will have a harder time getting the pain control medications they need.
Unintended consequences.
7
I actually agree with Trump's idea of executing the drug pushers who fuel the raging opioid epidemic in America. But I don't know where to draw the line-- obviously the CEO of Purdue Pharma (the company that owns the OxyContin patent) should be on the list of those receiving the death penalty, but where do you stop? The COO, CFO? probably deserve it. VP of marketing? probably. But what about the board of directors at Purdue? What about middle managers or low level VPs that don't have much of a say in how many billions of OxyContin are pushed each year? These questions need to be addressed before the government can start condemning these drug dealers to death.
72
Everyone forgets that it is the MD's who write the prescriptions and make the "opioid" drugs licit and available. None will write morphione tabs for addicts. None but clinics will write for Methadone, daily oral .
So the real "pushers" or dealers of Opioid type narcotics-Fentanyl, Oxy-Hydro morphone and a few others-are MD's. Will the doctors who might have at one time or another have written a script for M get the Hot Seat?
No one remembers alcohol sale prohibition-when no one (except doctors) and Churches or also home brewers and wine makers-could legally make wine or applejack-that it was the non liquor manufacturers who took up the slack-more alcohol was made and consumed during the 12 prohibition years then before. ALso-narcotics then became a more serious social problem. Pot was made illegal AFTER the wend of prohibition to keep alcohol agents employed-no one knew what it was for decades.
Sadly, the only end to these problems is to wait them out-as the epidemic of the late '60's and '70s shows. Non methadone "cures" like prayer and 12 step programs don't work, even for booze. They do make many program heads and managers very wealthy, though.Look m at Phoenix and Odyssey Houses.
7
CBS Sixty Minutes ran a segment on McKesson corporation flooding markets with opiods.
Put McKesson out of business, it's executives in jail.
1
True enough; at some point you have to think about penalties for the sales reps and the shareholders that passively profit off of addiction, no? My, it could get messy!
Remember he lies about any and everything. The war on opiates are just like his gun reform ideas-- lies that he will walk away from at his earliest convenience. The net result of his New Hampshire is no progress on the opioid crisis don't waste your time waiting on a concrete proposal.
33
What utter poppycock. There’s PLENTY of evidence that harsh prison sentences and capital punishment don’t merely deter crime but patently prevent it. The evidence is in the large reductions in violent crime rates across the country since we’ve been locking up so many criminals. And, while a negative is hard to prove, you can bet that innocent people are alive and walking around because executed murderers are no longer around to commit further predations – even guards or fellow inmates in prisons who aren’t murdered by murderers.
We’ve simply resolved as a society that increased rates of violent crime will rise because we don’t like the self-image of being the largest incarcerator in the world.
Law-abiding ILLEGAL immigrants. I needed a laugh.
Trump should do more to combat opioid addiction than his administration does. But whatever he winds up actually doing, it never will be enough. If entitlements didn’t consume such an immense percentage of the budget, there would be more discretionary funding available for programs aimed at patching up our socially wounded. Short of dramatically raising taxes, that’s not going to happen. As with ALL the ills to which flesh is heir, you can expropriate ALL of production to treating them and STILL fall far short of what is needed to be truly effective.
But bless liberals, who despite that fact continue to seek piling on what government does utterly blind to natural and rational limits.
4
"There’s PLENTY of evidence that harsh prison sentences and capital punishment don’t merely deter crime but patently prevent it."
I have seen the evidence that proves you WRONG.
Could you point me to the scientific evidence that you say proves you right?
Or is that just a personal view you hold in face of all the evidence to the contrary?
83
There are only two ways to educe crime - economic progress and an autocratic regime. Trump is not interested in economic progress.
22
Yes! A wonderful idea! Let's slash "entitlements" so the old people can die in the streets and disabled people can beg for a living. This will free money up to fight the War On Drugs.
Then, we will institute Harsh Punishment for Criminals.
Genius, Luettgen; genius!
3
481 of 1.434 million citizens in New Hampshire is far less than 64,000 out of the US population of 324 million. How does that make New Hampshire one of the hardest hit states in the opioid crisis?
1
That NH figure does look a bit counterintuitive in comparison, but the crunched numbers reveal it to be about 1.7x the national rate. But it's a mess everywhere.
10
I wondered about that stat too. Just last night on the local news I saw a story about overdose deaths in Hamilton County (Cincinnati). It said the total for the county -- not the entire state of Ohio, just one county out of 88 -- last year were around 500 (can't remember the exact number, I was multi-tasking at the time). Granted, this included overdose deaths from other classes of drugs too but when I think of states hit hard by this crisis, New Hampshire isn't exactly the first to spring to mind, though they undoubtedly have a problem as well.
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/hamilton-county-cor...
2
You need a calculator! It's almost twice as bad in NH as compared to U.S. average.
I see he's taken a page from Duterte and Xi's playbook which is indeed "patently absurd." When I see the Trump/Pence sideshow actually lobby Congress to appropriate funds to address the opioid epidemic by implementing solutions proven to work - and it's not the wall - I will believe he cares about this issue. Until that happens, it's just more blah, blah, blah. As president, Trump also could bring Big Pharma to the table, but won't as they have bought him, Pence and the GOP lock-stock-and-barrel. Oh wait - that's the NRA -but it also applies to Big Pharma.
44
The US war on drugs helped the Colombians kill Pablo Escobar in 1993.
We have more drugs than ever.
And now with Mexico, it is not only cocaine but marijuana, heroin, and meth.
If that's not enough, we can also look back to Prohibition.
It is a demand side problem. There is so much money that as long as there is demand, someone will step in to take the place of each person killed.
Education, treatment, and jobs.
Germany does high-tech manufacturing and trades. After 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an opioid crisis.
Also, speaking of cracking down on the dealers, how about the Pharmaceutical supply chain. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the Pharmaceutical company and distribution executives going to prison.
29
Donnie wants to treat addiction and and have dealers executed. Nothing new here. The same thing has been going on for decades. If, one way or another, you can afford to get in a treatment facility you are classified as having a sickness all others are weak drug addicts and possible dealers and will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. And of coarse Big Pharma wants to fight dealers and street drugs, they know this is cutting into their PROFITS.
12
The wall will not stop drugs.
There is so much money, the cartels dig tunnels. One report says 170 tunnels since 1990.
The have tunnel engineers and in one case sent their tunnel engineers to Germany for advance tunnel engineering training. Seriously.
$1 Million to build a tunnel is a couple of percent overhead.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/jun/21/us-mexico-drug-tunnels-change-amid-...
4
Yes, when you read about the tunnel technology (the New Yorker also had a good article a couple years ago), the wall is such a joke. Plus, you can’t stop the fentanyl lacing the heroin that kills people with a wall. I suspect most of that is flown in.
If this nation could only see drug use as a health problem that requires treatment and awareness repeatedly can help- not stricter law enforcement and punishment. Trump should know that most folks in prison have addictions.
Plus drug dealers have been killing themselves for years only to have the next one begin. Ironic how the most abundent nation ever is using high amounts of meds for anxiety and depression. Social conditions, income and despair are reasons we should address.
Trump's lack of empathy once again shines through. Wonder if he uses anything?
14
Watched the debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump stalked around in a threatening display. Also, kept on sniffing. My immediate thought was that he had just sniffed some of that white powder stuff up his nose before the debate. Weekends away from the White House may well be for isolation so that he can feed his habit behind locked doors. Oops, maybe not - have seen reports that he locks his bedroom door at the White House. Maybe stimulates himself for his early morning Twitter ravings and rants. His wife sleeps in a separate room - well beyond his beck and call. Smart lady.
1
He's never actually had the opportunity to stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, but he's been dreaming about it for a long time. Drug dealers make as good an excuse as any. Unfortunately, a lot of his supporters share his fantasy. The shooting has only begun. The people who want to believe they have his permission to open fire are armed and desperate to impress themselves, Trump, and women like Stormy Daniels.
14
According to the federal government, 50% of non-medical users of prescription opioids are given them by relatives or friends and 25% are prescribed by doctors.
Considering that working class, blue collar areas, the source of Trump's electorial support, are the ones hit hardest by the prescription opioid problem, he might want to re-think that death penalty thing as he might end up killing his voters.
28
Trump has the intellectual prowess of a gnat. He doesn't have the capacity for analysis. It's all about dramatic pronouncements, keeping his opponents off guard, appearing to be tough, and so on. That's why he now declares he wants to strengthen capital punishment laws in defiance of the national trend.
Anything to divert the nation's attention from the brewing Storm(y Daniels).
28
Now if the capital punishment were directed toward pharmaceutical company executives...
30
Ok. Let's review -- Trump wants capital punishment for (illicit) drug dealers, and not so long ago he and his minions (read: GOP Congress) gave BIG PHARMA a giant tax break so they can 'deal' even more.
Nevermind the 'why' folks are getting prescribed ridiculous amounts of these prescription meds, and how this is all a collapse of the bigger picture lack of proper health care that affects a large part of the people in the country, including lots of Trump's base. And a health care system that Trump continuously is working to gut out even more.
But, alas, Trump isn't in it for the people of the USA. He's in it for himself, his businesses, his ego, etc.
Between now and November, it'd be nice if some prominent GOP congress person or persons began standing up to Trump in a meaningful way (shown by action/ their votes), but I don't hold out for much.
Folks should take Trumps ridiculous ranting/ tweeting as fuel to act and get others energized in the lead-up to the November midterms. This is the only real way to respond to the lunatic POTUS.
18
Death penalty for drug dealers ? Seriously ? Who does this guy think he is.
The opioid crisis is a direct result of drug companies pushing doctors to prescribe opioids - Company execs said opioids weren't addictive and that doctors who weren't prescribing opioids were neglecting their patients.
Are you going to call them out trump ? I doubt it.
31
The doctors who ignored science and chose to just listen to drug company salesman are as culpable if not more so than those companies. They should have known better and if they didn't, they shouldn't have been prescribing opioids in the first place.
7
Somehow, you managed to put Sincere and Trump in the same sentence right at the end. Congratulations.
9
Can we finally dispense with the fiction that Trump or his supporters actually care about the opioid crisis, or any other problem in this nation? Because they don't. They didn't elect him to help "solve" this problem, or any other.
Oh, Trump supporters talked a good act about how their communities were being destroyed by opiates, how they felt they were being left behind. It was all cover. They didn't vote for him for this reason, or any other legitimate reason.
So why did they vote for him? Because he is who they are - racist, xenophobic bigots. The lies he continued to spout in New Hampshire are evidence of this. He has no more interest in solving the opioid crisis than they do.
But what he does give them is this -- an excuse for hating their brown-skinned neighbors. That's all Trump voters want -- that's all they've ever wanted.
As long as Trump voters continue to hear his lies that every problem our nation faces is because of some group of brown-skinned people (citizens or not), they will continue to support him. This is why they elected him, and with their continued rock solid support, this is why he will remain in office. They know it and he knows it.
So let's dispense with these ridiculous columns that discuss Trump's efforts to help solve any of the nation's problems. He knows his voters didn't put him there for any other reason but to affirm their bigotry against their browner-skinned neighbors.
76
One of my children was given a prescription for a week of opioids after removal of a wisdom tooth. I held on to the pills after picking them up so he could not take them without our knowledge. He said he did not need any of them. Is his doctor a “drug dealer”? This is a crisis created by the Pharma companies & complicit doctors. What’s the plan to hold these folks accountable?
18
Thanks for that good example of over-prescribing. It seems like people become hysterical about any level of prescribing opioid painkillers (one commenter suggested mandatory drug counseling for anyone getting a prescription). I’ve had several prescriptions due to joint surgery and barely took any of them and I know at least a dozen people, probably a lot more if I thought a little longer, who had prescriptions for things like rotator cuff repair, meniscus repair, joint replacements, spinal fusion, etc., etc. and none of them became addicted. The issues they were being treated for were the big priorities and getting back on track was always the main goal. But prescribing opioids for wisdom teeth removal, that’s a great example. I know this empirical evidence we always see in comments gets a little silly, “here’s what happened to me”, because everyone is different, but when I had all 4 wisdom teeth removed 45 years ago, I went in for my second shift summer job the same day! I think they told me to take aspirin. Sure, they weren’t impacted, but if people survived wisdom teeth removal decades ago with no opioids, they can now. Pain, especially pain that will fairly rapidly subside, will not kill you.
Kally, that's all fine and great for you but when I had all four wisdom teeth removed in 1983, I was in so much pain I could hardly stand it. I thank my lucky stars that I had an oral surgeon who gave me opiods. What you're saying is "just get over it". That's easy for you to say.
1
If he instituted the death penalty for drug dealers related to the opioid epidemic, we'd have to kill the CEOs of every pharmaceutical company out there...
22
The poison freely peddled by Big Tobacco kills ten times as many as do opioids, and not quickly as in overdoses, but slowly and agonizingly with lung cancer and its cousins. Want to impose the death penalty on drug dealers? Execute a few tobacco execs for mass murder and get ten times the bang for the buck.
22
The opioid crisis was created and fostered by American pharmaceutical companies seeking quick profits. To not acknowledge their role, nor hold them accountable for funding treatment of addictions they created is irresponsible. Trumps 'solutions' are ridiculous at best but more importantly they distract from those who are really responsible for this crisis and the mounting deaths.
9
The levels of cynicism seen in these comments is astounding. Who is the dealer: the person selling some bits of weed, the physician who writes a prescription, the pharmaceutical company who underemphasizes the risks, the parent who's child takes meds out of the medicine cabinet (we can't even get people to lock up their guns)? What are we going to do--put the whole bunch to death?
There are so many other questions. And it's not like the opioids are not useful or even necessary in some circumstances. There are all sorts of problems. So the guy in the White House pushes the death penalty, or some other vague policies that might do who-knows-what.
And as a nation we want to throw out expertise. Just follow the reality TV star. What a place.
21
Cynicism seems now to be the only reasonable reaction to the drug problem. For whatever reason, X number of people simply have to anesthetize themselves. We know that prohibition turned out to be a miserable failure. Treatment seems to be only marginally effective. The economics of interdiction doesn't work--lower supply by intercepting shipments or taking down big kingpins only results in raising the market price...which entices competitors to enter the market. You can blame the suppliers, whether drug companies or cartels, but the market is driven by demand.
It's opioids, and it's meth and heroin as well.
We know we have to do SOMETHING, and yet it seems there is nothing to be done.
It's like our gun addiction: Pandora's box has been opened.
No wonder we are cynical.
Many people get hooked on opioids because of the state of their lives, which probably accounts for the majority of the 38% who are on Medicaid. We certainly need funding to help those already addicted but it isn't going to prevent new addicts as long as the government persists in kicking people when they're down. In many cases they're down because of lack of jobs. An intelligent attempt to solve that problem would also help, as opposed to trying to breath life into a dying coal industry or starting counter-productive trade wars for example.
9
We have about 30 times more people locked up in prison for drug dealing than we did in 1980. Street prices of drugs are lower than they were then. Enforcement. Just. Doesn’t. Work. Simple empirical fact of reality. Like the sun rising. Addiction is defined by the motivation to use overriding consequences. No matter how many of our 4th amendment rights we give up, no matter how powerful the police state, no one anywhere ever gets cured of addiction because drugs are unobtainable. Ever. Sessions and Trump are so ignorant on this subject that they can’t begin to conceive of the depth of their ignorance.
23
Somehow it works in Singapore.
I wonder if there is a treatment center for someone who is addicted to having sex with strippers and porn stars.
From what I read, it's a pretty expensive habit costing in the neighborhood of $130,000.00 per affair, not to mention the emotional cost to spouses and other family members.
One possible solution would be the death penalty for all those who enable or cover up these encounters.
21
Emotional costs and death are pretty different. Your "joke" is cruel.
We have everyone of us heard the same story. Surgery,, or the biggie, back pain. Doctor writes a script for Oxycontin, maybe writes one or two renewals. Or ten or twenty.
And then the back pain sufferer is off to the races, heroin, methadone,, what ever will work. And most of it cheaper. This is the tale of 50% to 80% of all current addicts.
Oxycontin heals nothing. It is absolutely without therapeutic benefit. And yet,, enough oxycontin pills are manufactured and sold each year that every man, woman, and child can have a two month supply. 18 billion pills. And that doesn't get into all the methadone, Fentanyl,, also sold. Enough legal opioids are manufactured and sold to keep every man, woman, and child stoned for the entire year. And none of them, heal anything whatsoever.
The Food and Drug Administration should pull every license to manufacture or sell.
"Do no harm." These drugs do lots of harm.
172
Where is the evidence that huge numbers of people, without severe psychological problems to begin with, get opioids for physical pain from a doctor and wind up dead from an overdose. Answer: there isn't any.
Most addicts are self medicating for psychological problems that society can't or won't deal with. And a large proportion of these psychological problems arise from economic insecurity.
6
I have had opioid prescriptions for pain after two surgeries I had.
And once for a very complicated dental procedure
(Get ACL replacement and try to deal with recovery using asperin)
They were an absolute blessing during revovery.
A miracle.
And I was very happy to be done with them after two weeks.
Never refilled the prescriptions.
(Just saying - not everyone will become an addict. )
11
I agree the problem is a bit out of control, but to say there's no therapeutic benefit is pretty disingenuous. Yes, it's true, they don't technically heal anything but sometimes pain does need to be treated outside of a hospital. Have you ever had a major surgery without post op pain meds? Because I have due to a pharmacy issue after my hip surgery. I spent several hours at home after the hospital medication wore off and there's just no reason anyone needs to experience pain like that.
I get the sentiment and I absolutely agree the standards for prescribing opioids need to be higher, but painting this as a black and white issue is a very Trumpian way of thinking and it won't bring realistic and long lasting solutions.
14
Prohibition doesn't work. Those who wish to use drugs or alcohol will continue to do so regardless of what the law says. We should legalize, regulate, and tax drugs. Doing so would take away the criminal element much like legalizing alcohol put the gangsters out of business.
Pharmaceutical companies knew that opioids were highly addictive for those who are not in chronic pain. They should be required to fund treatment centers for those who become addicted to their products. Money is the only thing that matters to these people so let's hit them where it hurts.
We need to treat this as a public health crisis. The war on drugs was cruel and racist and demonstrated that we can't jail our way out of this. Let's fund research through the CDC to find out what works so we can help the ones who want to be helped.
What we mustn't do is keep these drugs out of the hands of those who truly need them. My dad's hands were crushed by a pallet and he has severe arthritis. On high pain days opioids help him function. But they never stopped him from working or caused him to become a burden on the government. For him and those who suffer chronic pain opioids allowed him to hold down a job and support his family.
16
He is failing them miserably because he is not sincere in his concern. If he was, something would be done other than blustering and bellowing.
9
But, wait a second! Drugs don't kill people, people kill people. Isn't that how it's supposed to go?
16
The WH clown’s answer for this epidemic is standard issue Calvinist remedy for anything: hit ‘em hard and if they survive lock ‘em up. Most likely little jeffie sessions whispered in his ear beforehand, to make sure the “base” is satisfied with said policy.
11
How about going after PerduePharma the company that came up with and pushes OxyContin the drug that is at the heart of the opiod epidemic. No one needs this junk. They make this drug and encourage their co-conspirators the doctors to prescribe this useless, highly addictive substance. That makers and pushers of this junk should be sitting downtown in prison with El Chapo.
9
Death penalty for drug dealers? How about for gun dealers? Both sell products that kill
17
Predictably, trump has used the opioid epidemic to paint black and brown people as the problem. Kill drug dealers, build a wall to prevent Mexicans from coming here? Has someone told him the main cause of the opioid epidemic has been 1) drug firms, notably Purdue Pharma, who have aggressively marketed and sold drugs like Oxycontin, and 2) doctors who have overprescribed opioids irresponsibly. If trump wants to execute drug dealers, is he going to go after the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma who have made billions and millions of dollars off the sale of opioids? Because they have been the biggest dealers of opioids. Is he going to go after doctors? Because they have been the major distributors of opioids. Or is he really only interested in street dealers, who have been stereotyped as brown/black people? I know trump's a racist, but really? If his plan was just ineffective and half-baked, it would be bad. But what he's doing, what he's trying to exploit is sinister. He's a racist, a race monger, a xenophobe, a narcissist, a dotard.
25
Wouldn't the pharmaceuticals and doctors be the drug pushers responsible for America's opioid crisis?
5
Trump is right about building a wall to save America, but it only would have worked if it was built around the White House before he got in. (By the way, what about his wife working as an illegal alien? Shouldn't ICE be paying her a visit?)
11
Melania was unusually talented in the breast implant department, so she got a genius green card. Too late for her. But of course she cheated the law at first. Trump's voters are titillated by his cheating, they don't realize he is also cheating them!
In keeping with our Dotards penchant for appointing bizarro-world cabinet members (Lawsuit loving, climate-change denying Pruitt at EPA, cheerleading major and animal husbandry specialist Perry who now controls the one agency he couldn't remember but would definitely abolish on day 1, education-proof Devoss), I suggest he appoint Mr Rush Limbaugh (voice on loan from God, hearing nearly repossessed by Oxy) to be the new Opiate Czar. He could rack up yuge points by arresting and executing the so-called doctors he used to triple his prescriptions, all the while claiming his own addiction was somebody else's fault - probably a planned parenthood clinic. Rush for Opium Czar!
18
Terrific :-)
1
Maybe Trump will next want to execute drug users. No drug users, no demand and no dealers.
4
Always dangerous--I know from bitter experience-- to talk ironically with people just waiting for any chance to do real harm. No idea is too absurd for them not to try.
2
Trump tweets that the firing of Andrew McCabe is a great day for democracy and then says that drug dealers should be executed; a clear violation of the Constitution. The stream of consciousness that flows past his vocal chords is verbal diarrhea and it´s time for the Congress to use that impeachment tool to yank this disgrace of a president off the national and world stage. I doubt that he has read the Constitution nor has he asked anyone to explain it to him. If Trump is so enamored of the dictatorial powers of Duterte, he can move there and run for office.
7
Trump is a very,very.very small man .
11
In 1981, the stereotypical image a drug lord had him lounging alongside a bloated, ragtop Cadillac land yacht...of the same sort driven by a young landlord in New York City. Heroin today costs, comparatively speaking, about 1/6th what it it did then. Drug lords today consider Cadillacs with the same disdain they held for the Ford Pinto. Lamborghinis, Maseratis and Maybachs, on the other hand...
Trump's favorite ride? You guessed it.
5
If dealers are to be executed will that include doctors, pharma CEOs and drug store owners?
9
you know what, Editorial Board?
You are actually feeding the nonsense by giving this abominable person so much copy.
Please tackle IMPORTANT issues, and stop the insane focus on this ego maniac.
Do we really need to read, each and every day, how incompetent he is? We know that already.
Do we really need another example of empty words? We certainly know that already!
I don't remember reading day after day what Obama said or did in 2009 or 2010. But I'm willing to bet you did not devote as much time and space .
7
To the Editor,
You suggest that "Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this [opioid drug] epidemic."
Ya think?
9
Trump returns to New Hampshire to give a speech about the opioid epidemic. The state he called a "drug-infested den."
Four of the state's five Hope for Recovery Centers were forced to close recently due to lack of funding. These centers have been saving lives and offer hope to recovering addicts.
Sanctuary cities, the wall, death penalty, bring back the war on drugs adds...... all political hot air. Trump declared the opioid crisis a "health emergency" five months ago. There's been no significant action.
Gut ObamaCare, cut Medicare/Medicaid that's where the focus has been.
Trump you want to see results???
Take all the $$$$ you need to build "The Wall" and direct it to these recovery centers. Give them all the resources necessary to succeed. It's a proven winning strategy.
It might not be the code words your base wants to hear......but it works.
633
OR - take the 30 million for the stupid, wasteful military parade in D.C. and put that money into drug treatment. You may even have some left to house homeless veterans.
6
trump does not want to see results - he just wants to pontificate - to actually do the WORK to achieve something would take away from twitter and cheeseburger time.
2
Hamstringing Doctors from legitimately prescribing is going to result in MANY unintended consequences. Shortages, patients being forced to illegal drugs, etc.
Let’s not swing from one extreme of the pendulum to the other..
31
Expanding Medicaid to cover dubious "addiction treatments" that help a small percentage of addicts is not a solution either. That's mostly throwing good money after bad. Prescriptions for opioids should come with mandatory drug counseling, attendance at Narcotics Anon, or some other addiction prevention program beginning as soon as the drugs are prescribed. In some people, it only takes a few days of prescription opioid use to experience withdrawal symptoms when the meds run out. Without addiction prevention, addiction "treatment" is likely to be just another big pharma scam.
1
Not true at all. Subutex works and usually works much better than just counseling or NA. Medication therapy is a MUST
15
How ridiculous. Do you know how many hip and knee replacements are done a year in the US? We should all get mandatory drug counseling for our Vicodin prescriptions? I just threw out my small bottle of Vicodin I had from a recent surgery—I only needed 2 for the first day/night post surgery and then ibuprofen was fine (this wasn’t joint replacement—for that I needed about 4 days’ worth). Not everyone gets addicted the minute they get a prescription. This is fear mongering.
2
So, families working with doctors and hospice to alleviate their loved ones’ pain from the ravages of cancer should get drug counseling?
Obviously you’ve never watched such a horror show. I hope you never do.
2
Temperance movements have always harmed society, and this is no different. I've lived through 65 years of gravity that eventually crushed a disk that allows my vertebra to pinch the nerve going down my left thigh. I don't need anti-inflammatory medicines that may shrink my disk further and cause more pain. I need opioids that block the nerve pain. My injury crippled me for months. I crawled everywhere. I was taking over 15 pain pills every day, two pills before I even got out of bed. I told my back doctor about my fear of becoming addicted, but he wasn't concerned. He refuses to meet with pharmaceutical reps pitching drugs. Research with pain management shows addiction is rare among people suffering from chronic pain. This modern temperance movement has unleashed the DEA to frighten doctors with the loss of their practice and is no different from our insurance companies calling to review our medications, a "review" that's none of their business. Our health is between us and our doctors not the DEA or people fueling our modern temperance movement against medicine because think they know better.
38
Trump should address the terrible state of treatment centers in the U.S. So called Addiction Treatment Centers like Fresh Start, owned by Narconon make money by misleading desperate parents and addicts claiming amazing success rates. Once lured in, treatment is often non-existent or somewhat provided by poorly trained staff IMO. My experience as a parent, saw Narconon as poorly staffed and having a lack of sympathy for the patient. Relying on the contract signed by the parent and they seemed to work to kick out the addict rather than try to find treatment options. My son for example, while under the care of Fresh Start Narconon was sent to the emergency room then allowed to walk out. No one at Fresh Start knew he was released, where he was or seemed to care. They had their money. I hope some agency takes on these poorly regulated centers like Fresh Start Narconon as fake and help sincere treatment options available.
14
those treatment centers are run by Scientology, and strongly reject psychiatry and medication-assisted opiate therapy. They have fashioned their name to resemble a contraction of "Narcotics Anonymous" but are no relation, and base their treatment on saunas and false ideas about how drugs are eliminated from the body. Beware of contracts with Scientologists.
8
From news reports from legitimate media and documentaries on PBS, which every conservatives most hated legitimate media, most opiod addiction begins with a doctor's prescription, primarily Oxycontin. Users get too many pills for too long and they get hooked. They can't afford the pills, so they start looking for street heroin which they can afford. Now the heroin is being mixed with fentanyl which many times more powerful and kills people left and right.
Our society must stop overprescribing Oxy and other highly addictive pain medications. Some people do have severe, chronic pain from disease or injury. That is a different situation entirely.
What is needed are treatment programs to get people off the narcotics. We need to crack down on the pill mills. People need opportunity and a sense of purpose lest they fall into chemical dependency. People need community and a sense of belonging.
Trump wants to shoot drug dealers.
22
Maybe Trump means doctors.
6
And insurance companies need to pay for alternative treatments which cost more than opioids but are much safer.
7
How about gun dealers?
7
The Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation (JCOHA) was so certain that providers were not using enough opiates that they require a pain questionnaire for clinic visits. Obviously anyone can get tylenol and NSAIDs, so this was about opiates. Nobody dares to contradict JCOHA, because they fear loss of accreditation. More than 10 years of this and there is no wonder we have an opiate epidemic!
8
Mr. trump proposes that drug dealers be executed. Next he'll be suggesting that money launderers, real estate scammers, and those who undermine America by colluding with foreign governments be executed.
38
Sure, let's put him first in line!
4
In our dreams, Bruce. In our dreams...
4
Funny! My guess would be the opposite - only people with experience in those areas can serve in the White House, congress, or the Supreme Court. You don't really believe he is also a Drug Dealer, do you? Even meth tweakers make more sense than this guy, and from where I sit, most drug dealers are more honest.
1
The “drug dealers” in this case are the manufacturers, the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who pushed these drugs on people and lied about their addictive nature. How do you impose the death penalty on corporations? Oh, yes, I forgot. Corporations are people, too, according to Citizens United. Is Trump so ignorant that he does not understand who the “ drug dealers” are or is he on to something? Corporate death is an interesting concept. Put them out of business and confiscate the accumulated wealth of those who orchestrated it. Use those resources to help the people who they have harmed. Well, I can dream, can’t I?
106
Despite our President wanting to 'execute the drug dealers,' multinational corps flooding America (hey, a guy's gotta make a buck, right?) with "non-addicting" opioids will never, ever be subject to the death penalty -- no matter how severe the offense.
Yes, Corporations ARE people, too, my friend -- until they aren't.
This isn't Justice -- it's "just us!"
We, the People need to take America back.
1
Surprise, surprise, Trump wants to mirror the behavior of the Philippine president, Dutarte, a thug if ever there was one.
152
But Trump says he is pro-life. Right.
9
This is a manufactured epidemic. It was created by drug companies & their aggressive, dishonest marketing and by doctors who set aside their own training and their obligation to "do no harm", and swallowed the pharma marketing hook, line & sinker. For a doctor, there is nothing easier than writing a 'script and saying "next!" THAT'S how you see 5 or 6 patients per hour and stay in the good graces of the insurance companies. So doctors have been handing out prescriptions like M&M's and patients are suffering. So let's execute drug dealers. Makes sense.
401
Docs forced to "address pain" by the Joint commission on Hospital accreditation, but docs not given a lot of time to see each patient. Docs learn to give a quick prescription of antibiotics for infection and opiates for pain, because the patient thinks they have the right to question any other course, which they do except there is no time allotted to answer extensive questions. The doc is not given enough time to answer questions, must complete extensive electronic medical record, must move on to next patient, must not get behind. Otherwise health care would cost even more. Forces this outcome. Maybe if we used robots that based their decisions only on medical evidence and data, and not on patient questions and requests, we would do better. Is that what you want? Because if you think you have the right to question what the doc recommends based on objective medical evidence, you are not going to get the best treatment.
5
Agree it is a manufactured epidemic, but the bad players are the business model created by middlemen in the purchasing/supply chain industry. Yes, there are clinicians who have overprescribed but the marketing practices of Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOS) and Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PMBs) and the oversupply of opioids on the streets by their distributors to satisfy contracting. They limit competition to maintain control and extract wealth from medical supplies. Related is that there are opioid shortages in hospital settings that have gone on for over 10 years. http://www.physiciansagainstdrugshortages.com
3
No it the govt and regulations that put pain level on a vital sign chart and patirnt satisfaction as a valid model of judging a physician’s care that causes over prescription. The addiction problem though has much more to do with cultural and societal issues and poor coping skills where people want to numb up psychic pain than go deeper to address root causes. No doctor, not even a psychiatrist can help there. Maybe better parenting and a meditation class.
4
Last year, Trump referred to New Hampshire as a "drug-infested den." Not only did those words dismiss an entire state, they take away any authority Trump could have ever assumed on the drug epidemic. Drug addiction is an illness more than law breaking. Without addiction, the consumer base for drug dealers would dry up.
Pathologies can't be treated with the long arm of the law.
Jeff Sessions looked delighted to be singled out by Trump during the speech for his supposed concern about the issue. But Sessions is wrongly using the Justice Department to go after marijuana use in states where it's legal. Talk about missing the forest for the trees!
Trump and Sessions are both punitive and oblivious. They are the last individuals who should be treating the scourge of drug abuse.
181
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
Please!!! "Sincerity" and "trump"don't belong in the same sentence. He fakes sincerity (poorly) merely as a hook for expressing his authoritarian instincts, that appeal only to his diehard supporters.
Even of you support the death penalty, pushing it as a cure or deterrent for opioid addiction is so wrongheaded as to be absurd. Could his supporters really be so dumb as to support it?
37
In one word, YES!
1
As always, Trump offers an illusory "tough guy" solution to a problem requiring something different. One reason the War on Drugs has been a decades-long failure is that drug issues are not inherently issues for law enforcement, the judicial system or the penal system. Drugs and addiction are matters of public and private health, and if there are answers to be had, they will come from those sectors.
155
Valid comment but our penal system does a terrible job in helping inmates in any way. Many if not most come out of prison with active drug addictions and face a difficult time getting jobs even if they want to rebuild their life. There needs to be a better solution. Likewise IMO treatment centers like Fresh Start Narconon are a rip off and prey on desperate parents.
4
I largely agree with you that drugs are a medical issue as opposed to a law enforcement issue. Largely, but not completely. That being said, to claim that there has ever been a "war on drugs" is laughable.
We refuse to seal our border to prevent millions of illegal aliens from entering our country. How can we make any type of ridiculous claim that we are remotely serious about stopping drugs from entering?
Because the drugs in question are not street drugs but our country's own pharmaceuticals? Building a wall will not end drug availability in so many ways. It is nothing but a pipedream solution, a short-sighted, bigoted conservative pipe dream.
2
I don’t understand why no one suggests what seems obvious to me: putting more money and research towards pain prevention strategies. As someone with chronic pain, I understand how people could get hooked on opioids, since they seem to be the best treatment we’ve come up with. Better alternative treatments would certainly reduce the need for opioids, and the harm that results from their use.
73
Sunny:
Guess what? Alternatives to chronic pain include marijuana and CBD oils
But Jeff Sessions wants to roll back research into medical marijuana and recriminalize marijuana in the US.
Big pharma pushes opioids and worsens the epidemic.
Do you see the problem more clearly now?
9
Many people have found pain relief using CBD oil (non-psycho active ingredient in cannibas). Big pharma doesn’t want you to know about it because it would ruin their big profits. No prescription needed in CA and other states that have dispensaries.
12
Another drug that treats pain is cannabis. It has been demonstrated to be effective in helping people addicted to opioids manage withdrawal. Sessions and Trump want to drive it back underground. Bright "liddle" bulbs that they are.
I thought he already rolled up his sleeves and beat opioids last year when he told everyone to just say, "No."
20
"Mr. Trump might be sincere in his concern for people suffering from this epidemic."
He is sincere in wanting to feed and entertain his base. Not much else.
The blanket desire to execute any drug dealer is a paean to Philippine President Duterte: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/18/philippines-dutertes-drug-war-claims... . One can only imagine what the guy in the White House will advocate next, what cheerful policy is forthcoming.
12
I live and work in WV, a state that is right up there on the addiction and deaths from overdoses scale. Unlike trump, I actually work with people who suffer from addiction issues (as well as mental health disorders)...he doesn't have a clue as to what would work for us. We need money for long-term residential treatment, we need money for educational programs for when people graduate from these programs, we need money for job programs, we need money for residential housing for mothers and kids, and we need money for health care to pay for the medication assisted treatment. And we need the dedicated staff to work in the field. We are tired of fighting this fight with next to nothing in return. His star turn in NH did nothing to help this serious national health issue.
Believe me, if just saying no or building a wall worked we would already be doing it. Unfortunately neither of those ideas work.
535
I agree that all of the above are needed. There are spotty residential places and of course the private pay ones like the ones affiliated with Dr. Phil on his show that he always recommends for his guests. I have known a mother and child home through Catholic Charities and a inpatient house or two through Catholic Charities on Long Island in New York. The public is just getting educated now with so many deaths. Medical science has long been researching and coming up with opiate blockers, etc. Now, everywhere has many drug deaths. No one has the prize on the most. We cannot afford a continued stigma as now people are realizing the drug deaths are of the boy and girl next door. As for jobs programs, perhaps not many know that there are career centers all over the country in every city, major town and state. These centers are gov-run in conjunction w/labor department and send people to school for training in job skills and are taxpayer-funded. There are also workshops and computer classes for office tech skills and job search assistance--resume, interviewing, etc. These services are free of charge for those who qualify. You just have to register. People in need can find these centers by Googling or on www.onestop.org; www.servicelocator.org. For basic life needs like food and more, every local Catholic parish serves its community with parish outreach-social ministry and St. Vincent de Paul services few know about. All you have to do is call your parish -- no need to be Catholic.
5
Good comments and I agree with Gloria. Be careful about throwing more money at this problem however. We have to find a way to regulate shoddy so called treatment centers. Im my experience and opinion, treatment centers like Narconon Fresh Start in California is really just a marketing scheme taking advantage of desperate parents. The treatment is light weight and the staff seemed to be looking for reasons for the addict to fail.
6
I don't believe rehab is the answer. It has a very poor success rate because it is often seen as a magic bullet but ultimately people have to want to quit on their own and they need the circumstances that led them to become addicted in the first place removed permanently or they will just relapse. That's why the real solution is fixing our economy to be more fair and much greater enforcement of the law in general so people aren't so desperate/in such bad situations.
4
I'm still waiting for the NYT to ask and explore why companies that manufacture the antidote of choice for opioid overdose have increased the price of a generic, easily and cheaply produced drug, naloxone, over 1,000%.
The NYT seems to deliberately avoid the subject, as if they have been instructed to not mention it.
People, meaning corporations, are making money from this so-called crisis. It's called price gouging.
313
YES:
naloxone should be 'nationalized' by the government
as a public health matter and made available free for all ...
if necessary, a one-time, lump-sum, market-price could be paid to the
developer.
we could do-this NOW
grrrrr
9
Aristotle, thanks for reminding us that liberals are also prone to conspiracy theory nonsense.
Honestly, the far left and far right were made for each other.
There's no need for the NYT to ask; we who live under pro-corporate, anti-patient insurance and pharma cartels already know how to fix it.
Starts with an "S" and ends with a "payer Medicare for all".
Oh, and jail the Sacklers.
It's drug laws that lead to drug gangs. We learned this with alcohol in the 1920s, when making the sale of alcohol illegal quickly resulted in a lucrative industry being handed over to small time petty hoods, turning them into big time gangsters like Al Capone almost overnight.
Want proof that killing drug dealers won't stop drugs? Well, how about this: drug dealers kill each other all the time. That doesn't stop the next guy in line because to him, his boss getting killed is not a deterrent. It's a job opening up for him.
One thing we need to do if we can't end the War on Drugs is to admit to ourselves that our policy is not a response to gangs. It is what makes the gangs able to stay in business. Legal businesses don't have profit margins worth dying or killing over.
That's a problem we're eventually going to have to figure out how to solve. But for now, let's find more money to treat addicts, please. All addicts, not just the illegal drug ones.
69
Capital punishment reduces recidivism to zero.
the problem with the opioid epidemic is that doctors are not allowed to prescribe enough opioids. this might seem like a contradiction but its not and i know from personal experience. my wife who had two back fusions used prescription opioids for at least 5 years in an attempt to control her pain. for her they worked, but the problem with opioids is that the body eventually habituates to them requiring larger and larger doses to achieve the same pain relief. eventually they stop working all together, but of course you still have to take them or you go into withdrawal. once you habituate out you have to stop taking them. the process of stopping without going cold turkey is called titrating down. my wife accomplished this 3 times, but it requires the assistance of a doctor who is willing to prescribe the required amounts of opioids. in today's anti opioid climate that is not possible. doctors, afraid of going to jail will prescribe enough drugs to get someone hooked on them, but not enough to get them off. patients who take the drugs legitimately for pain are left with their addiction and no way to get off the drugs until they lose their jobs, get arrested and wind up in jail.
24
I swear that even tough I loathe this President and the venal, racist, rich-serving, anti-environmental policies and "thinkers" he promotes, I would have applauded and supported him if the proposals to combat and treat opiod addiction made sense. How did this person ever have any success in business and real estate?
24
@Michael
"... How did this person ever have any success in business and real estate? ..."
He was NOT successful.
This person would be far richer today if he had simply liquidated his inheritance and placed the money into an S&P500 index fund.
10
You asked how he was "successful "in real estate?...by not paying contractors for completed work, litigating them into submission with an army of lawyers , and,oh yeah, by laundering money for Russians...look at his tax returns...
2
An opiod epidemic largely driven by overuse of prescription pain killers. Manufactured by big Pharma and prescribed by American doctors. And Trump is focused on his stupid wall and a war on drugs? And capital punishment for drug dealers? Like who, the CEO of McKesson? Yeah, right. Trump is proposing a solution for a relatively non-existent problem while continuing to do nothing while thousands of Americans slowly kill themselves. Another winning plan by the Trump administration. Not.
67
'Mr. Trump’s New Hampshire speech did contain a few good ideas — but only a few. He said that the administration would seek to reduce opioid prescriptions and expand access to medication-assisted treatment for those suffering from addiction.'
There is a significant issue when dealing with prescription opioids as there are many who suffer daily with serious chronic pain, and currently certain opioid drugs are the only drugs, for some patients, which have a positive, lasting effect. As usual, especially from someone as ill informed as disinterested as Trump, the 'get tough' approach will inevitably lead to more cases of more doctors being leery of prescribing needed drugs, even for patients truly in need.
I was a little stunned last night on PBS nightly news program when an 'expert' stated that big reductions of opioid prescriptions are needed, evidently even in his opinion for those who have used them prudently and in minimal doses, for years. The expert's opinion was that 'things like acupuncture, diet and other ways' will dramatically reduce the need of people who are genuinely suffering from long term, chronic pain. That is ludicrous, when clearly a well reasoned and nuanced approach is wiser and far more humane.
What is needed is for each patient to be evaluated on a one by one basis, not some carelessly thought out ideas, some blanket approach which sees all of those who 'use' opioid drugs, regardless of condition or the amount of use, as a problem.
198
Those in chronic pain are being told to gargle with warm water and salt.
Then this leads them to find alternatives like the neighborhood dealers.
11
You might like to know that there is much more science supporting the use of acupuncture for chronic pain than there is for opioids.
But of course, who wants medicine practiced based on science rather than anecdote.
3
Tim, are you aware there is a national consensus developing among experts in pain management treatment that an integrated approach - which includes psychological methods for treating pain - is urgently necessary?
Don't be so quick to fall prey to the fallacies of materialist thinking.
was not the speech given in new hampshire because they require an early voting slot for their primary and election status as first in the nation. as for dumbledumb's speech he should have called it infrastructure week part 4.
11
If there isn't an overarching theme of law and order, lock'em up, shoot back or some other strong retaliatory message, it doesn't fit in Trump's wheelhouse. His brand is violent vengeance not prevention and cure. The latter sounds soft while the former enhances his standing with the base of his support. Of course his "solutions" do little if anything to address the core problem of addiction, but that's irrelevant in his eyes.
43
I do not consider execution of drug dealers preposterous. These guys are murderers and execution may be the only way to stop them.
Drug treatment is fine and dandy but will not stop the lucrative business of drug pushing by drug dealers. Unless drug pushing is stopped, the scandalous annual death toll of 64000, or maybe even more, will continue. Punishment short of execution has not worked so far.
18
If the death penalty worked then why is China so corrupt, when they have executed dozens for corruption?
26
The opioid epidemic is not largely about illegal drugs but about abuse of legal drugs such as oxycontin, etc.
32
Ever played the game 'whack a mole'? That's exactly what execution of drug dealers accomplishes--pretty much nothing. You want to stop the "lucrative business of drug pushing", try addressing the cause(s) for drug abuse and dealing with them, not try to eliminate the problem by whacking at the symptoms.
21
Death penalty? Yes, there's already a death penalty for drugs. That's the problem, it's not the solution.
"Drugs Involved in U.S. Overdose Deaths* - Among the more than 64,000 drug overdose deaths estimated in 2016...... Source: CDC WONDER"
Death is everywhere, and it's certainly a penalty, but if you don't have a better solution, Mr. President, why don't you step out of the way and let others look for answers. Others, that is, who look in places other than the mirror.
89
Not only that. Any law enforcement person who knows about drug dealers will tell you there is a high death rate among them. If getting killed tomorrow isn't going to frighten you, I doubt a death penalty you may suffer years down the line is likely to.
3
Sounds likeTrump is going to demand summary execution for drug dealers. If such a law is passed, I'll believe it is a serious effort when the DEA breaks down a door to a high prescribing doctor's office, marches the doc and his staff to the nearest concrete wall, lines them up with hands tied behind their backs and shoots them down with a single volley from the DEA sharpshooters.
17
For most of my life I honestly believed that the counter-productive aspects of the drug war stemmed from a calculated racism, but it looks like the same people are now hell bent on lighting fire to white communities. Lock up dealers with harsh sentences? Many of these dealers have children, children who will grow up seeing them through a glass barrier, children just like the children of the crack epidemic in every way but skin color. Maybe it wasn't racism; maybe stupidity and arrogance run deeper than we ever thought.
11
Trump is calling for the death penalty for those dealing in these drugs. It has been widely reported that American pharmaceutical companies have been the biggest dispensers of opioids. Democrats should immediately call for the death penalty for corporate heads of these companies. It is a political fastball down the middle of the plate. But as usual, the Dems will swing and miss.
15
Trump should appoint as "drug czar" to oversee programs to tackle with opioid and other drug epidemics: Elinore McCance-Katz, M.D., Ph.D. who now is the first Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use. I doubt anyone is better qualified in this country.Let her and her team design and implement new and more effective programs.
5
Medication assisted treatment will do little to stop the drug addiction of opioids without a real drug rehab program. Our family member got a year's suppy of suboxone from his doctor and then descended into heroin use. Also our family member did not fill out the Affordable Care Act so some addicts will need treatment from a program in which they did not have to fill it out, but their parents do.
9
thank you for sharing your personal story and thereby putting a human face on this problem. peace.
2
Oh, that's never been tried before. Let's scare all the junkies out there by threatening to kill them. Brilliant move.
20
His suggestion is the death penalty for drug dealers. Not their victims
2
Victims is relative - unless they force people to take drugs. The same principle could be applied to tobacco companies - they sell products that are addictive and are likely to kill eventually when used as intended.
8
He is threatening to kill dealers, not junkies. I am not a fan of the death penalty in general. Certainly not for drug crimes. Nonetheless, let's be honest about whom he is proposing to execute.
2