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malaise

(269,094 posts) Wed May 25, 2016, 07:15 AM May 2016

How cracking down on America's painkiller capital led to a heroin crisis-read this and weep

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/25/opioid-epidemic-prescription-painkillers-heroin-addiction
<snip>

For James Fata, the transition from prescription painkillers to heroin was seamless.

The 24-year-old came to Florida to shake an addiction to opioid pills, but trying to go through rehab in a region known as the prescription capital of America proved too much. When a government crackdown curtailed his supply of pills, Fata turned to readily available heroin to fill the void.

“The pills were hard to get. They got to be very expensive. Heroin is cheap,” said Fata, 24. “Almost everyone that I was close to, anybody that was doing pills with me, typically they would at least get to the point where pills were not an option. You were either snorting heroin or shooting heroin.”

Florida was the crucible of the opioid epidemic now gripping the US. Before deaths from opiates spiked nationwide, the state’s south corridor earned the name “Oxy Express” for its liberal access to the extraordinarily powerful synthetic heroin painkiller, OxyContin.

But after Florida spent years trying to shake off its reputation by driving out of business the worst of the notorious “pill mills”, the twist came that state officials hadn’t predicted.

When the addicts Florida facilitated could not get prescription opioids anymore, they turned to heroin.

At one point, more than 90% of all the prescription opioids dispensed by doctors in the US were sold in Florida.

9 replies

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How cracking down on America's painkiller capital led to a heroin crisis-read this and weep (Original Post) malaise May 2016 OP

This is how the DEA justifies it's job sorefeet May 2016 #1

Who do you think is making money off heroin??? malaise May 2016 #4

I don't understand what you mean sorefeet May 2016 #7

I just watched a CBC documentary on youtube Ichingcarpenter May 2016 #2

Wish I could rec this malaise May 2016 #3

Just Posted it in Videos and Multimedia. Ichingcarpenter May 2016 #5

Done malaise May 2016 #6

We have been talking about doctors pushing both pain pills jwirr May 2016 #8

Did they try going to Rush's house? lame54 May 2016 #9

sorefeet

(1,241 posts)

1. This is how the DEA justifies it's job

Reply to malaise (Original post)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:30 AM

May 2016

They came into Billings one day and put out a memo to all doctors. We are cracking down on opiates. So all the scared doctors kicked bunches off the pain programs, that's when we started our turn at heroin addicts. My doctor told me "if I don't do what the DEA tells me, they will take my license." If they took my pills I would use heroin, until my poppies came in harvest. I won't let them fuck my life up again. I need the shit for pain, not because I get a buzz.

malaise

(269,094 posts)

4. Who do you think is making money off heroin???

Reply to sorefeet (Reply #1)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:47 AM

May 2016

Sometimes I wonder

sorefeet

(1,241 posts)

7. I don't understand what you mean

Reply to malaise (Reply #4)

Wed May 25, 2016, 11:55 AM

May 2016

All I know is before I become suicidal thinking every waking minute again, because of unrelenting pain, I would use heroin. Because I know that no one gives two shits about my health or my pain problem, ESPECIALLY my V.A. doctor. So I have to cover my own ass. And so do many other people in pain.

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)

2. I just watched a CBC documentary on youtube

Reply to malaise (Original post)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:45 AM

May 2016

OxyContin: Time Bomb ........... the fifth estate

The fifth estate is Canada's 60 mins but like the old days
I didn't think it would captivate me but it did. It talks about using
Heroin, methadone.and anything they could do because their pain and addiction to oxycontin. Also covers how the doctors pushed it for the drug companies, unknowable through false data, bad science that got it through the FDA.. Then the patients and families it destroyed.

AWARD WINING DOC.

It was touted as a miracle pill: a narcotic pain reliever that could change the lives of people suffering from chronic pain, but with little -- so its maker claimed, and thousands of doctors believed -- risk of addiction.

Since OxyContin was introduced in 1996, Canada has recorded the second-highest number of prescription opioid painkiller addictions -- and the world's second-highest death rate from overdoses.

"It's helping your pain, but then you get immune to it, so then you go to the family doctor and he says 'Well, you're gonna need more,'" a woman who became addicted to OxyContin tells the fifth estate's Linden MacIntyre. "So he puts you on the 40 milligram (dose) and you're on that for a month, and then you get used to that dose and he puts you on the 80s."

But how did a little pill that only appeared in 1996 become so big, so fast? In 1998, Canadian sales were just a few million dollars. Twelve years later they had soared to $243 million. In the U.S., sales were $3.5 billion in 2010. Though there were differences in corporate style and legal structure between Purdue in the U.S and in Canada, a similar marketing approach proved wildly successful. the fifth estate examines why medical schools, GPs and specialists in pain clinics readily embraced the drug at first, and why some have now changed their minds.

malaise

(269,094 posts)

3. Wish I could rec this

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Reply #2)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:47 AM

May 2016

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)

5. Just Posted it in Videos and Multimedia.

Reply to malaise (Reply #3)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:55 AM

May 2016

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017376618

malaise

(269,094 posts)

6. Done

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Reply #5)

Wed May 25, 2016, 09:57 AM

May 2016

jwirr

(39,215 posts)

8. We have been talking about doctors pushing both pain pills

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Reply #2)

Wed May 25, 2016, 12:17 PM

May 2016

Last edited Wed May 25, 2016, 01:08 PM - Edit history (1)

and antibiotics to everyone who came in with the right complaint for many years. It is one of the reasons that we are now talking about antibiotics that no longer work and so many people who are addicted.

But it is not just the doctors - the emergency room, the pusher, the treatment center that has no contact with the doctor and grandma who has a bottle of pain pills on her bedside table due to her cancer.

I do not know what we are going to do because we have a government that is making money and points off of the drug war. They do not want this to stop. And they won't until it hits them.

Edited to say the video above is very well done. I am going to rec it to the center where my grandson gets treatment for this addiction.

I wonder if the VA is following Jovey's lies on this? Anyone know?

lame54

(35,297 posts)

9. Did they try going to Rush's house?

Reply to malaise (Original post)

Wed May 25, 2016, 12:48 PM

May 2016

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