Or Options on opiates III if you follow this blog or like reading interesting stuff! (
Options on opiates and
Options on opiates II; I like that second one: chloroform, cannabis, alcohol and morphine in a single cough medicine! Then cocaine to cure the addiction!)...
Anyhoo... I am currently reading an enjoyable fiction novel that has the plot of opiate addiction. The author mentions that this is nothing new and is really a repeat of what happened in the period up to WWI. Although I knew a bit about it - re laudanum luvvies - it chimed exactly with an article I was reading in the NYT (yes, yes, I know): "
The late-19th-century opiate epidemic was nearly identical to the one now spreading across the United States", from
Clinton Lawson's "
America’s 150-Year Opioid Epidemic"..."
In the case of the opioid epidemic, history is literally repeating itself.". the article very maturely points out that the main problem is to find a way to take the appropriate steps to both 'confront the powerful interests that drive' the over-prescribing of opiate painkillers and avoid over-criminalising the 'victims': most addicts aren't needle using zombie-looking dropouts in a dirty '
trainspotting toilet' backdrop. And some of these [
CBS] "
prescription painkillers are about 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine."
The
Council on Foreign Relations has a great background on the issue and although the US Opiate Epidemic is clearly the worst, they are certainly not alone (scroll down to "
How are other countries dealing with opioid addiction"
HERE). In the UK too,
opioid abuse is growing. "
Britain already has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts, and last year, drug-related deaths hit a record high in England and Wales" and as previously mentioned, it isn't always the "classic". The image above is from the same article, look closely: click to enlarge.
More info:
NIH/NIDA, where it also tells the sorry tale that from July 2016 through September 2017 opioid overdoses increased 30 percent in 45 states; in the Midwest region where a large number of my family (not immediate) live, the increase was 70 percent.
