Drug Overdoses Set To Kill More Americans Than The Vietnam War

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

daily caller
Steve Birr
10:51 AM 06/22/2017

[excerpt]

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/22/drug-overdoses-set-to-kill-more-americans-than-the-vietnam-war/

Drug overdoses are set to claim more lives this year than Americans killed in the Vietnam War.

The death rates for middle age Americans are rising among nearly every racial group after more than 100 years of decline, fueled by addiction to painkillers. Opioids contributed to the first drop in U.S. life expectancy since 1993 in 2015. Doctors wrote more than 236 million prescriptions for opioids in 2016, showing American appetite for painkillers is not slowing down, reports Axios.

The New York Times recently culled through data from state health departments and county medical examiners and coroners, predicting there were between 59,000 and 65,000 drug deaths in 2016, the largest number ever recorded. That is roughly the same number of lives lost to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam combined.

“There’s no question that there’s an epidemic and that this is a national public health emergency,” Dr. Leana Wen, the commissioner of public health in Baltimore, told The New York Times. “The number of people overdosing is skyrocketing, and we have no indication that we’ve reached the peak.”

A recent analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by The Washington Post shows the death rate for middle-aged Americans rose 8 percent in 2015.

[truth_seeker]

The son-in-law of a neighbor recently died. He committed suicide, due to his opioid addiction.

He was a Fire Department Captain, in his late 40s, husband and father.

He was injured on the job, given prescription pain meds, and apparently wound up seriously addicted, lost his job, and jumped off a freeway overpass into passing traffic.

The medical profession is wonderful at surgical repair, helping folks with short term pain problems, but really lousy on the back end, getting people off the deadly drugs.

This I know from personal experience, as well. Fortunately I got myself off pain meds, but got a good look for myself.

My orthopedic surgeon is great. So is his PA. But neither one told me about the drugs, or about their plan to get me off them pronto.

We need doctors that are better educated, with better skill at getting people off the deadly drugs, IMO.

* Now you can claim you have really, really severe pain, that only opioids can treat, and my reply is you may be addicted to the drugs, and unwilling to try getting off. But you should really try. It might save your life. And no, I am not a trained medical professional.

[Hoodat]

Opioids contributed to the first drop in U.S. life expectancy since 1993 in 2015. Doctors wrote more than 236 million prescriptions for opioids in 2016, showing American appetite for painkillers is not slowing down, reports Axios.

236 million prescriptions?  Thank you, ObamaCare.