Our role is completely neutral on use itself, we focus on prevention of blood borne infections while providing referral to a range of treatment & safer use options. Harm reduction applies to range of options. Those are our participants' choices. That said, we've seen a spike (no pun intended) of prescription opiate injection use.

Completely unregulated, no database.

People come from hundreds of miles away regularly to buy there and it feeds into black-market sales epidemic as well.

Makes the cannabis hypocrisy even uglier.

He lives there. He broadcasts from there. It's his home.

that hurts no one, but so little at addictive drugs pushed by "legitimate" doctors that causes more deaths per year than traffic accidents.

I don't understand the war on alternative medicine on this site. Really? Now we have a war on acupuncture?The damage done by prescribed opiates is just the tip of the iceberg.
Check out nursing homes and hospitals where lots of drugs are used. Post-operative delirium is now becoming common with "drugs" being a major cause.

1. Deference to police abuse

2. Deference to Presidential abuse

3. Deference to "authorized" medical abuse

All are related and on the spectrum of authoritarianism.

It also manifests as anger at speculation about "conspiracy theories" because it threatens the status quo.

are marketing it as a health aid.

Mental and physical are completely inter-related.

The line between drug and medicine is a fuzzy and hard to see one.

the sellers of street drugs don't run ads on TV and in magazines and newspapers. They don't advertise their products as healthful.

Comparing the shysters who peddle false medical cures with street dealers is silly.

Can't one think that abuse of prescription drugs is bad AND that acupuncture and homeopathy are bullshit?

The relationship or the commonality of the issues is pretty obvious.

Both have to do with medicine and pain relief.

It is interesting -literally interesting from a sociological perspective - to see outrage at alternative medicine as bullshit being expressed so vociferously while at the same time seeing the abuse of "standard" medicine as being accepted as so matter-of-fact.

There are plenty of times when the scope of people's emotional reactions doesn't match well with an objective evaluation of the pros and cons of different situations.

We often get more outraged at Democrats letting us down than when Republicans do much worse -- I guess because we simply expect (or want to be able to expect) better from Democrats, while we are inured to Republicans being awful.

A story about a puppy trapped in a well can garner much more public response than a story of an earthquake killing hundreds of people in a distant place.

In the case of abuse of prescription drugs vs. acupuncture, I guess the blinding stupidity it takes to believe in acupuncture generates a stronger oh-my-god, eye-rolling reaction than the typically more dangerous, but also somewhat more understandable, abuse of drugs that at least have a proper, real use, and which produce a real, non-imaginary, and apparently (in the short term) pleasurable response when abused.

I'd also be more shocked to discover an adult believing in Santa Claus than finding out that an adult was a car thief -- relative harm isn't the only thing that figures into people's reactions.

...as anyone paying attention can readily see.

They routinely pop up to trash anything like alternative medicine, accuP HomeoP or whatever.

Pretty Patently Pathetic, Inc..

Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2013, 02:20 AM - Edit history (6)

Is actually a direct result of their illegality/extremely high cost and profit margins/lack of advisement of their use by medical professionals at the point of sale. Along with the high cost of rehab or ORT (opioid replacement therapy) programs.

Furthermore, I actually doubt that the 'safety profile' of alcohol is terribly different from the numbers you see represented in the OP. Can you not EASILY imagine that for every 1 (acute ... since basically ALL opioid-related deaths are acute ones ... more on this below) alcohol-related death, there's 10 emergency room visits related to alcohol, 130 alcoholics, and 835 'recreational users' of alcohol?

Come to think of it, that's actually probably a better safety profile than alcohol has. Esp. when you consider that the LARGE majority of opioid deaths and emergency room visits actually involve opioids mixed with alcohol, not straight opioids. People RARELY OD and die on opioids alone. It's nearly always a drug cocktail where alcohol is part of it.

Also of interest, other than some rare 'designer' exceptions, pure opioids are non-toxic to the body. Meaning ... nobody dies from chronic opioid use. You might OD and die (rarely), but there's never been any study that proves that you shorten your life by using or even abusing opioids (not pure opioids, and not DIRECTLY, anyway) ... there's nowhere NEAR the evidence for long-term organ damage that there is related to even just the regular use of the legal poisons known as alcohol and tobacco, let alone their 'abuse'.

Another interesting factoid re: the claims of this OP and documentary: Oxycontin was reformulated about 5 years ago, and it's no longer smokable, shootable, or snortable. Imagine how much luck you'd have doing any of those three things with a 5 year old JuJuBe, and you'll have the right idea. Oxycontin is now very difficult to abuse, other than by simply taking it orally. It's difficult to even CHEW the pills is the truth, let alone shoot it up.

What they're referring to is almost certainly either a different oxycodone formulation (than oxycontin) like 'Roxys' (aka 'Blues' aka instant release 30mg oxycodone, a formulation of the drug that's been around since the 60's I believe) or Percocets that have undergone cold-water extraction to remove the acetaminophen ... or a totally different opioid like Dilaudid or Opana, which are both still available in formulations that will turn to powder upon crushing and are hence easy to shoot/snort/smoke.

Opioids are only legal with a doctor's prescription. As is pot, at least in a good (and growing) number of states.

WithOUT a Rx, Oxy possession (esp. low-quantity, personal possession) is a WAAAAAY more serious offense than pot possession. You kinda should compare apples-to-apples on these kinds of things.

At least according to the government...

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html