
The rise of drug overdoses in New Hampshire has created a backlog of autopsies - iamjeff
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/07/us/drug-overdose-medical-examiner.html
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twblalock
This opioid epidemic has made me question my position on legalization of
drugs. I had believed that, in general, legalization of drugs would be a good
policy -- it worked fine for marijuana where it has been tried, and I doubted
that very many people who don't take hard drugs would start doing so if they
were legalized. Now, I'm not so sure.

It seems to be the case that some opioid addicts transition from using
prescribed medication to illegally obtained medication, which is sometimes
illegally produced and adulterated with other drugs. So, it seems that
legalizing the recreational use of opiates would enable people to use the
"authentic" version of the drug, which is safer.

On the other hand, there are tons of overdoses from prescribed opiates, which
are legally obtained; and the overdoses are increasing. Contra my earlier
belief, it seems that as access to opiates became easy and legal (via
prescriptions), the number of addicts increased dramatically.

This seems to be a situation in which tens of thousands of people will die
every year via ingestion of legal drugs unless some kind of intervention is
made to remove their access to those drugs. It's hard to see how legalization
or decriminalization would make a big difference.

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arjie
Why shouldn't we let them die? One in six base jumpers will die young while
jumping. We don't make that illégal.

I mean, everyone knows you can overdose. So that makes it a conscious choice,
and we should preserve people's ability to make an informed choice to put
themselves in danger.

~~~
mschuster91
> Why shouldn't we let them die? One in six base jumpers will die young while
> jumping. We don't make that illégal.

Well, a base jumper is, well, dead when the parachute fails. You maybe need
someone to scrape the remains off the ground, but that's it.

Drug addictions and ODs, as well as the side effects from criminalization
(prison/judicial costs, drug related crime) end up costing a boatload of
money, plus a highly aggressive user of coke, meth or multiple drugs is often
enough a public danger.

~~~
arjie
Ah, the problem is that they _don 't_, in fact, die. That's fair.

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spodek
If Russia wants to hurt the U.S., why bother with so nebulous a tool as
election tampering? Why should North Korea bother with expensive nuclear
weapons to harm the U.S., not that the strategies are exclusive?

Just produce cheap opioids and dump them in our borders, we'll take care of
the rest.

Or maybe they're already doing it.

~~~
mtreis86
Doesn't even need to - we took care of invading Afghanistan and quadrupling
the worlds supply of opium a couple decades ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanista...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan)

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oh_sigh
Mods: typo in title - 'overdoes' instead of 'overdose(s)'

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galeforcewinds
When no other action has driven change, financial factors seem to often spur
movement. Autopsies in NH are paid for by the state, so a surge will surely
trigger a deeper awareness in the legislature. There have also been a number
of stories recently about workforce capacity losses and hiring challenges;
this places the problem more squarely in the domain of businesses which may
have deeper pockets than the government. It is my prediction that before long
we'll see lawmakers announcing new public-private initiatives sponsored by
large companies to combat the opioid crisis at a community level. I think
we're on the leading side of this trend, as government initiatives on the
health industry level are just getting rolling, [https://www.nih.gov/opioid-
crisis](https://www.nih.gov/opioid-crisis)

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fabian2k
The numbers just seemed incredibly high to me. I looked for similar data for
the EU, and I found one report for 2015
([http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/4541/T...](http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/4541/TDAT17001ENN.pdf)).

The number of overdose deaths in the EU is ~7500 there, and there is no
similar large increase since 2006 (the data in that report doesn't go as far
back as the NY Times article data for the US). The report cautions that there
is underreporting in some countries, but even then the number seems to be much
lower than in the US.

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pmoriarty
_" With the nation snared in what the government says is the worst drug
epidemic in its history..."_

When have I heard that before?

Maybe during the crack epidemic. Or the meth epidemic. Now it's the opioids'
turn.

"But this time it's different," I'm sure.

~~~
thr0waway187
Yes, this time _is_ different -- since white people are dying, we suddenly
feel sympathy. When blacks OD from crack, they were thrown into jail and
treated like morally failed individuals. When whites die from heroin, we feel
sympathy and want to treat them.

~~~
marindez
I’ve heard this argument many times now and I still fail to see how we’re
feeling sympathy for these people. Every time this conversation is brought up
I see 0 solutions and people that very low-key suggest these people have to
die because coal must disappear, because outsourcing to China is good because
we’re living in a global economy, because they vote Trump and they don’t share
our liberal view of society and they might not like black people or feminists,
etc.

~~~
brainfire
Those are some... pretty strange views. Where do you see them expressed?

~~~
marindez
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418764)

~~~
brainfire
I think you might be... extrapolating a lot from this.

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vixen99
So what effect would drug decriminalization have on this situation?

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neuronexmachina
A large portion of the deaths are from prescription drugs:

[https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html)

> Opioids (including prescription opioids, heroin, and fentanyl) killed more
> than 33,000 people in 2015, more than any year on record. Nearly half of all
> opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid.

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drawkbox
Here's how to "fix" the opioid crisis, through healthcare and rehabilitation
not criminalization.

When a person gets hooked on opioids, never cut them off cold turkey. At the
end of a surgery/injury/treatment with prescribed opioids for pain, our
current system makes users go from regularly used/available to not at all, or
once addiction is noticed then access ended immediately. This is the root
cause of the problem, from there people go out and get street opioids,
sometimes heroin and sometimes it is cheapened by fentanyl where you get a few
specs of it and you OD. Basically, the cutting off of the user access to the
drug from regularly available to none is the MAJOR problem here.

What we need to do is this, taper people off if possible, if not then why not
let them continue to get them until they can ween themselves off through
rehab. Basically all opioid patients can get them as long as they need but it
switches from the doctor to a healthcare specialist in controlling addictions
at the end of every opioid prescribed treatment. Some will not need this but
for the ones that have been on them for a while due to pain/rehab, there would
be no cold turkey stopping. At least if people are hooked, this prevents them
from going out and getting heroin laced with fentanyl that could be deadly. We
are basically setting people up to die this way in our current system.

Every solution I have seen is to be _harsher_ on doctors expecting them to
control it, or _harsher_ on the amounts they give, all that is _strong arm
tactics and pushing liability on people that don 't want it_ making the
problem intensely worse. Instead we should put the liability of addiction on
the patient themselves and give them options to help themselves with education
and rehab, don't just cut them off and leave them on their own.

We need a health layer in our system that helps people with addictions and
getting quality drugs that aren't going to kill them as some people will just
do that and some need help, we can pay for it by ending the _War on Drugs_.
Pharmaceuticals will go along with this plan because it allows people to keep
getting pharma drugs as long as they need to get off of them, but users won't
be doing it alone, nor trying to stop cold turkey. This type of policy will
help a large portion of at least the opioid addicts that get hooked through
regular medical channels.

Ending the _War on Drugs_ while using that money for healthcare/rehab instead
of incarceration, allowing other low level substances like cannabis, and
providing people a path to take when they finish with their medical treatment
if they find they have an addiction is better. Once the US stops treating drug
usage and addictions as a crime and start viewing them as health issues or
manageable issues with lower level substances, this will all be much, much
better.

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ComputerGuru
@dang I flagged this because there’s a typo: overdoes should be overdose

(My brain read it as “overlords” and I was trying to understand why I made
that mistake.)

Edit: thanks

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basicplus2
Drug problems get worse with higher unemployment

[http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2017/02/27/unemploym...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2017/02/27/unemployment-pushes-addiction-deaths/)

