Opioid, Schmopioid

[endicom]

American Thinker
Ronald J. Kozar
July 14, 2017

If you intentionally crash your car into a tree, don’t call me for a tow.  If you deliberately set fire to your own house, don’t ask me to put it out.  And if you overdose on opioids, don’t expect me to come to your rescue.

Come to think of it, opioids aren’t even in the same moral category as the car and the house.  Opioids are worse.  For all I know, it may be legal to burn your house down.  And, depending on where it is, crashing your car into a tree may be legal too.  Opioids, by contrast, are against the law.  Libertarians like me may want to make drugs legal, but my side lost that argument.  And, legal or not, using opioids is just plain stupid.  Compared to an opioid user, a man who punches himself in the face looks smart.

More... http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/07/opioid_schmopioid.html

[Victoria33]

American Thinker
Ronald J. Kozar
July 14, 2017  If you intentionally crash your car into a tree, don’t call me for a tow.  If you deliberately set fire to your own house, don’t ask me to put it out.  And if you overdose on opioids, don’t expect me to come to your rescue.  Opioids, by contrast, are against the law.  Libertarians like me may want to make drugs legal, but my side lost that argument.  And, legal or not, using opioids is just plain stupid.  Compared to an opioid user, a man who punches himself in the face looks smart.

@endicom
@roamer_1
@txradioguy

I agree, putting billions of dollars in the new healthcare bill for opioid addiction is wasted money.  What it means is they will do more to try to stop me having prescribed hydrocodone.  They can't get to/find those who get these drugs illegally, but they can get to me.

What a person takes is not the government's business.  The govn. needs to get out of our lives.  As late as the 1950s, govn. didn't control your every movement.  Now, they control us.

Here is why they do that:  When a person is an elected official who makes laws, that person must write a new law or sign onto a new law, in order to say he/she did "x", so "reelect me".  The more laws the person racks up, the more it looks like he/she is doing his/her job.   If that person did nothing about new laws, it would appear he/she isn't doing his/her job.  That is why we are burdened with new laws all the time.

The Libertarian Party is looking better all the time.  "Give me liberty or give me death" has new meaning in these times.

[Sanguine]

...The issue with opioid addiction, as with gambling, alcohol, and all the other addictions on our spoiled culture's ever-lengthening list, is one not of love but of respect.  If you tell people they're sick and need a pill, then that's how they will live.  If you keep treating addictions as epidemics, and you keep calling addicts victims, then be ready for a lot more "epidemics" and a lot more "victims."

Save our EMTs for real victims of real diseases.

Good article!

[endicom]

Quote

    ...The issue with opioid addiction, as with gambling, alcohol, and all the other addictions on our spoiled culture's ever-lengthening list, is one not of love but of respect.  If you tell people they're sick and need a pill, then that's how they will live.  If you keep treating addictions as epidemics, and you keep calling addicts victims, then be ready for a lot more "epidemics" and a lot more "victims."

    Save our EMTs for real victims of real diseases.

Good article!

Yeah, he's right about that. You're not helping people if you're enabling what's killing them.

[endicom]

The Libertarian Party is looking better all the time.  "Give me liberty or give me death" has new meaning in these times.

I gave up on the LP but that's just me.

Libertarians have liked to point to charitable organizations that used to handle these things. The help they gave came with strings attached that encouraged people to reform themselves or to repent or whatever.

[Sanguine]

I remember when I took my first triage lesson.  It was horrible - leave the chest pain guy?  Pass by the one with multiple amputations?  Awful choices.  But, when you have limited resources you have to take care of those who are savable, given the resources, and not tie up all of your resources in one patient when there are multiple patients.  It's a tough lesson.

Chemical abuse has the additional factor that it is a self-selected harm.  It's not some mass casualty that just happened to a bunch of people going about their daily lives.  It's a deliberate self-inflicted harm.