The scale and darkness of this epidemic is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew.

Tragic – Andrew Sullivan on the Opioid Epidemic in America

I don’t even know where to start. I can say, you need to read this. We need to understand the terribly seductive and addicting properties of opioids. One things that stand out is overuse…

No other developed country is as devoted to the poppy as America. We consume 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone and 81 percent of its oxycodone. We use an estimated 30 times more opioids than is medically necessary for a population our size.

A great history lesson on opioid use follows.

Who uses opioids now?

It’s telling that the drug has not taken off as intensely among all Americans — especially not among the engaged, multiethnic, urban-dwelling, financially successful inhabitants of the coasts. The poppy has instead found a home in those places left behind — towns and small cities that owed their success to a particular industry, whose civic life was built around a factory or a mine. Unlike in Europe, where cities and towns existed long before industrialization, much of America’s heartland has no remaining preindustrial history, given the destruction of Native American societies. The gutting of that industrial backbone — especially as globalization intensified in a country where market forces are least restrained — has been not just an economic fact but a cultural, even spiritual devastation. The pain was exacerbated by the Great Recession and has barely receded in the years since. And to meet that pain, America’s uniquely market-driven health-care system was more than ready.

How large is the problem….

It’s hard to convey the sheer magnitude of what happened. Between 2007 and 2012, for example, 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills were delivered to West Virginia, a state with a mere 1.8 million residents. In one town, population 2,900, more than 20 million opioid prescriptions were processed in the past decade. Nationwide, between 1999 and 2011, oxycodone prescriptions increased sixfold. National per capita consumption of oxycodone went from around 10 milligrams in 1995 to almost 250 milligrams by 2012.

The quantum leap in opioid use arrived by stealth. Most previous drug epidemics were accompanied by waves of crime and violence, which prompted others, outside the drug circles, to take notice and action. But the opioid scourge was accompanied, during its first decade, by a record drop in both. Drug users were not out on the streets causing mayhem or havoc. They were inside, mostly alone, and deadly quiet. There were no crack houses to raid or gangs to monitor. Overdose deaths began to climb, but they were often obscured by a variety of dry terms used in coroners’ reports to hide what was really happening. When the cause of death was inescapable — young corpses discovered in bedrooms or fast-food restrooms — it was also, frequently, too shameful to share. Parents of dead teenagers were unlikely to advertise their agony.

I absolutely love this shot at AG Jeff Sessions…

Attorney General Jeff Sessions even recently opined that he believes marijuana is really the key gateway to heroin — a view so detached from reality it beggars belief.

There is mention of ending the war on drugs.

The problem is more than an addiction problem as the article concludes…

To see this epidemic as simply a pharmaceutical or chemically addictive problem is to miss something: the despair that currently makes so many want to fly away. Opioids are just one of the ways Americans are trying to cope with an inhuman new world where everything is flat, where communication is virtual, and where those core elements of human happiness — faith, family, community — seem to elude so many. Until we resolve these deeper social, cultural, and psychological problems, until we discover a new meaning or reimagine our old religion or reinvent our way of life, the poppy will flourish.

We have seen this story before — in America and elsewhere.
The allure of opiates’ joys are filling a hole in the human heart and soul today as they have since the dawn of civilization. But this time, the drugs are not merely laced with danger and addiction. In a way never experienced by humanity before, the pharmaceutically sophisticated and ever more intense bastard children of the sturdy little flower bring mass death in their wake. This time, they are agents of an eternal and enveloping darkness. And there is a long, long path ahead, and many more bodies to count, before we will see any light.

Read the whole thing.

A few comments. I am open to the idea of suspending the war on drugs. As a reader of this blog, which there is at least one semi-regular reader, you are aware I am very much against the use/abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture. CAF is a creation of the war on drugs. The somewhat noble idea was to quickly choke of the supply of money to the drug lords when they got caught. Unfortunately, trickle down economics was quite successful, combined with perverse incentives that has led to innocent and small time plays getting their lives ruined. I invite you to read the story of Burt Wagner’s life being thrown into total disarray by the DOJ.

I have heard Burt speak. After hearing his story and the actions of the US DOJ, I realized that I would never be on a jury again. That I would never trust government thugs that can upend your life as easily as you can smash a flee with your boot. The damage these actions do to the heartbeat, the psyche of America aren’t easily measured and very hard to undo. I am open to the idea that this damage is worse than the actual problem of legal or illegal drugs. Then there’s the idiot AG Jeff Sessions who believes marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin and it gets even easier to believe that the war on drugs causes more problems than it solves.

The government has too much power. I realize it’s the “in-thing” these days to believe in big government. Everyone wants the government to fix something. There’s a price to pay when that happens. Be careful.