Over the last couple years the headlines have brayed about the opiate epidemic. Politicians chime in, despite their lack of credentials. Disregarding the ancient history of opiates, that archeological evidence shows were some of the earliest plant based medicines people used, these medicines are treated as if they are simply some new invention by Big Pharma.
I suspect the problem is really that the patents wore out, and now the pharmaceutical companies are trying to replace opiates with drugs they can profit from. Big Pharma doesn't care whether they work or not. They only care about profits, and out of patent medicines profit them nothing.
Regardless of what the particular cause of this insane denunciation of one of the most ancient and useful medications known to humanity is, it is causing horrible and unimaginable suffering around the world. Over 25 million people who are dying every year from terminal, and excruciating, illnesses, are dying in agony that could be eased with opiates.
More than 5 million children, every year, die suffering unnecessarily.
Don't let Big Pharma hide behind politicians and the MSM to use the agony of innocents to produce profits. Stop this madness, and the profiteering from human suffering the anti-opiate campaign is causing.
Personally, whenever I see Big Government, Big Pharma, and Big News all on the same side, I am sure they're lying, to harm us, for money. I have yet to discover I have been wrong in that assessment.
Furthermore, I work construction, despite having significant damage to my back, and accompanying chronic - agonizing - pain. I would not be able to work without palliative medication, and nothing else works. I have undergone repeated MRIs, X-rays, and had my doctors interrogated by soviet style panels of political physicians, all in order to keep working. I have had doctors forced out of local practice because of these tactics.
Edit: I am reminded by @stevescoins recent post
"...the upper middle class votes democratic, and the jobs they take as HR managers, diversity officers, journalists, burrocrats, academics, and other assorted positions as the Nomenklatura of the Political Class require a conformity of thought. Don't rock the kickback boat, baby!
"Whether you call it crony capitalism or syndicated socialism, the effect of the corruption is the same. And it is not just kickback between these big corporations and the government (remeber the 14,000 waivers of Obamacare requirements for Obama campaign contributors?), it is that these dingalings require conformity in their own corporations...just one example being Google's persecution of the guy that questioned the Holy Purity of Diversity Just For Diversity's Sake."
"Taking this back to the media"
"And while we revel in the antics of Hollyweird and the NFL as they try and regain some credibility, the thread moves back into fakenews and the media..."
...that this recent propaganda push is all about money too. Who makes all the opiates in the world? Well we know that over 90% of opium is produced in Afghanistan, in fields guarded by US military forces, and in a trade controlled by the CIA. Some of that opium is used to manufacture morphine sulfate, legally supplying the pharmaceutical trade.
Legal morphine is dirt cheap, carefully manufactured, and administered by professionals as safely as can be. The important thing to those that control the industry is cheap.
Black market heroin is cheap too, but breeds an ecosystem of ancillary business models, from prostitution to money laundering, that all contribute to increased profitability.
Less legal opiates drives customers to black market opiates, and reduces competition for the medicine, increasing profitability of the preferred market by the profiteers thereof.
[I believe this is more relevant to the post than my personal experiences, which I blathered on about prior to this edit]
There isn't a doctor within a hundred miles of me that will take new chronic pain patients. I doubt this is a local problem, and every year more and more people that could be enormously helped by palliative care are forced to do whatever they can. Just as people have for thousands of years, but now they're forced to become criminals by those whose need for money and power drive patients, particularly the poor, to medicate themselves, denied medicine and trained professional help for their illnesses.
From time to time the politicians win, and my meds are replaced with something like Ibuprofen, Neurontin, or Acetominophen - none of which work [Edit: and they're potentially fatal, both from overdose, and chronic poisoning of the liver and kidneys. Drugs, even OTC, have side effects. I want to add a note here that medical malpractice and hospital acquired infections are the third leading cause of death in the USA. Estimates are that up to 440,000 are dead each year because of it. The AMA has good reason to point the finger somewhere else). One doctor told me I could take entire bottles of Neurontin safely. We're talking tens of grams of it at a time. Despite every effort, only one class of meds work: opiates.
Because they work, I work. Millions of people in the same boat aren't as lucky as I, or have turned to the black market, where all the dangers of the complete lack of quality control leaves them vulnerable to pushers who care only about money.
Sorta like Big Pharma.
Edit: boy, I really need to calm down! Sorry about all the edits. Sometimes I feel I gotta spit the flow, or the flow will split me. I should prolly write my posts in an external editor, and do my editing before I post.
