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Sheriff Richard K. Jones of Ohio’s Butler County says his deputies won’t carry Narcan, a drug that can almost miraculously reverse overdoses of heroin and opiate pain medications that might otherwise be fatal. At nearly $40 a dose, the drug (known generically as naloxone) is too expensive to keep using on the same drug abusers, Jones says.“All we’re doing is reviving them. We’re not curing them. One person we know has been revived 20 separate times,” he told NBC. It’s “sucking the taxpayers dry.”Naturally, the sheriff is being pilloried for wondering how long and to what degree society must backstop people suffering the entirely predictable result of their own self-destructive behavior. Beyond that, the situation serves as a spectacularly apt metaphor for America’s approach to social disorders and welfare spending generally. ...The scourge of opiate addiction has hit particularly hard here in the Midwest, where we like to think of ourselves as industrious and sober. People who would never have imagined themselves seeking out a drug pusher find themselves returning to their doctors again and again to maintain their access to their drug of choice. When the supply dries up, some turn to the illegal, expensive, but readily available alternative, heroin.Ironically—and significantly—we were started down this path by well-meaning doctors who thought they were helping. Just as the devil can quote scripture for his purposes, it seems he can also turn our best intentions to his own ends. ...
