Claim 1
It is a lack of safe and regulated prescription opioid drugs which is causing the overdose/opioid crisis and not the prescription of safe and regulated opioid drugs.
Purdue Pharma was wrong to claim an opioid like OxyCodone was non-addictive and it was wrong to mislead patients on the addictive potential of oxy-contin. This does not change that patients knew in general that opioids themselves were addictive and it certainly does not change that there are very few treatment options available for intractable patient pain when other treatment methods have been exhausted. Claiming OxyCodone was non-addictive was wrong; prescribing it was not.
It is my position that California should lead the United States in recognizing that it is a lack of safe, regulated, and readily prescribed opioid medications to treat the very real problems of human pain and suffering, which lead humans suffering from pain to turn to illicit opioids that drives the overdose crisis and in the post oxycodone hysteria, via just say no prescribing attitudes by doctors enforced by the DEA; we have created the opioid crisis by leaving patients without a safe supply to necessary drugs..
Let us be the pioneers in curing the opioid epidemic, by ending once and for all the notion that pain is less terrible than death itself.
Claim 2
Claim 2
The superiority and safety of legal supply
In claim 1 I showed that with a safe, legal, and prescription model for the supply of opioid drugs, all overdose deaths, including those caused by illicit drugs, amounted to 15,000 people per year. After the prescription crackdown, the black market made available an illicit supply, available to all pain patient. Under the direction of the DEA, doctors under duress greatly wrangled prescriptions, creating demand for illicit opioids, leading the overdose rate to increase from 15 k in 1996 to the current overdose rate of 180,000 per year.
I now claim that a safe and legal supply of opioid drugs, despite their addictive potential, and their inherent danger, through a prescription model, regardless of the patients opioid use disorder status, would lead to: a decrease in the use/proliferation of illicit fentanyl, would reduce the rates of fetanyl addiction, and would tank the economic viability of an illicit fentanyl business. This solution is therefore the only solution which will reign in the perceived uncontrollable fetanyl problem, because without the support of doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers taking a harm reduction stance on opioid use disorder, largely driven by legitimate patient need, illicit opioids will continue to meet the needs of pain patients driven to the extremes of desperation in the absence of safe supply.
Claim Three
Claim 3
The legalization economic imperative
Does anyone know where or even how to buy brick weed? The cartel stopped exporting brick weed when we legalized cannabis. Notice that when we restricted the prescription of rx opioids, that from 1996 on, the amount of fentanyl in the us drug supply increased, and the number of overdose deaths increased exponentially so. Just like legal cannabis obviated the presence of foreign grown cannabis in the California market, so too would relaxing prescription guidelines for opioids lead to a disappearance of the economic viability of street fetanyl provision operations.
It has been proven that although many opiate users have become adjusted to, and dependent on, only fetanyl, the vast majority of patients and opiate users would prefer a safe, legal, and easily accessible opioid alternative, available through a visit to their doctor, perhaps a medical system like that for cannabis, or maybe a new system, where they would receive narcan with every disbursement, an offer for addiction recovery programs, and a gold standard of compassionate care that recognizes the autonomy of the individual, the importance of their suffering, and the value of their life despite being an opiate user.
These people matter. Their lives matter. Their deaths matter.
And their deaths are all preventable through rational prescribing guidelines that begin with California doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers deprogramming the DEA hysteria in post OxyContin America.
People die, but this is the difference between 180,000 per year, and 15,000.
Claim Four
Lifting the prescription crackdown and allowing people access to safe and regulated opioids with concomitant offers of rehabilitation and overdose prevention medicines is the solution to the fentanyl crisis.
The cause is the cure.
Fetanyl continues to take lives. As I write this post, a man, woman, mother, child, daughter, son, uncle, doctor, nurse, bluelighter, or individual is being effected by the illicit supply of fetanyl in the United States. This is more than just users dying. This is a collective trauma event.
I ask that all of you reading pause for a moment and consider your loved ones whom have died in this fetanyl epidemic. I will consider my dead as well. I know that everyone on blue light likely know someone who has lost their lives to opioid use disorder or who has overdosed as a result of fetanyl.
Given how many people have died thus far, it is probable that many of us have been personally affected by this overdose crisis, I ask that you not just consider my words today. I demand that you consider even the most outlandish solutions. Ask yourself, would I rather have the person, for whom my mind remembers, still in my life, but having been resuscitated with narcan mandated by law to be given to every Individual who received an opioid prescription. Would I rather have seen my loved one been given a maintenance medication like diacetylmorphine, rather than having been told that opioid use disorder is non-life threatening, and that there is nothing the hospital can do until they have abstained from opiates long enough to induce on suboxone, or being turned away from a methadone clinic because they do not have a long enough history of abuse? How long will we be satisfied to say that it’s the drug users fault that they’re addicted and that it is not the fault of our just say no, don’t do drugs, attitude within our society, which leads us to disregard the human suffering which underlies so many cases of opioid use disorder. How long can we blame Purdue Pharma, Big Pharma, for the opioid crisis, when it is clear that not treating pain is what has caused the fetanyl overdose crisis, and not Purdues provision of a safe and regulated supply of opiates.
Around the world solutions are being implemented and utilized to profoundly improve the lives of addicts and by our show of hands, the people who loved them, and never wanted them to leave.
To our north, in Canada, people receive heroin injections, under doctor and nurse supervision, and every day they do not overdose and die in that setting.
To our south, in Mexico, people suffering opioid use disorder, are treated with the psychedelic ibogaine, and through transcendental experience, and raw willingness, they make the choice to be reborn without the impulse to use heroin, sometimes successfully, but always with more legality than in the US where such treatments are pursued outside of the law.
To our East, in Portugal, the possession of drugs is decriminalized, so that drug users do not find themselves a burden to the state and their fellow countrymen, they are provided access to rehabilitation facilities, and their existence is not a subject of criminal prosecution.
And to our West, in China, in a post opiate war world, the Chinese people are, for many conditions, able to acquire over the counter codeine, and with relative ease, through doctors, access various opioids, to treat illness without the same stigmas that prevent so many Americans from even going to the doctor.
Many Americans seek no treatment through our medical system at all anymore, but on every corner, in every city in America, makeshift doctor deaths, will sell you little blue pills, masquerading as safe and legal opioids, which may be the last decision you ever make.
We can be a society where we create the economic opportunity for criminal enterprise to play doctor with our loved ones.
Or we can adopt a sensible drug policy, responding to the claims I made above, which I will repeat now.
Individuals deserve autonomy over their existence. Their choices deserve respect. Their lives have value whether or not they are addicted to opioids. We can take sensible approaches and accept that opioids are an absolute necessity for many Americans, albeit in some cases they may not be necessary yet, and we can at every step of their procurement, provide safety measures like narcan to prevent abuse, provide access to a way out of opioid addiction through rehabilitation, but we will first have to acknowledge that our l “just say no” prescription model and our “don’t do drugs” attitude, “your suffering is your fault” perspective, has lead us from a reasonable 15,000 people dead from all opioid overdoses in 1996, to the out of control and ever increasing, 180,000 per year, overdoses on every street and in every city, every person on this forum remembering our dead. This DEA drug policy and prescribing guidelines, which serve no one, and are born from the desire to blame Purdue Pharma for having helped us to relieve the pain of our loved ones, makes us just as culpable as the doctor deaths on our street corners, so long as we choose to blame the Sacklers for providing safe opioid medications so that our loved ones could live pain free lives, possibly choosing to get off those medications at a later time. That later time has passed for them, but it is not too late for us.
We must choose life.
My fourth claim, therefore, is that the cause is the cure, and we must come to terms with, and accept, that for the American people, just saying no, to patients seeking relief from pain, is leading patients to just say yes to anyone or anything that can relieve their suffering, so great that they would rather face death, than continue to experience that pain, to that degree.
When I say the cause is the cure, I mean that in whatever context, a return to the 1996 model perhaps, an adoption of a system similar to the medical marijuana program with a doctors recommendation, access to weaker opiates over the counter like in China, access to actual opioids for maintenance alternative therapies like in Canada, access to psychedelic rehabilitation programs like in Mexico, or perhaps a complete decriminalization and overhaul of treatment offerings like in Portugal, almost any solution on Earth is better than what we are doing now.
As it stands now, our hearts are heavy with the deaths of love ones, our ailing and sick are suffering, our desperate are dying in the streets curled up with foil and straw, our doctors deny our suffering, and our government imposes it.
I raise that you consider the simplest solution to our problem, that the cause is the cure, that some people will inevitably die when using opioid medications, but the complete prohibition of opioids, is leading to the death of immeasurably more.
I reiterate, the cause is the cure, and the clearest most present solution, is to alleviate the pressure on doctors by the DEA, by calling on our doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers, to adopt the compassionate perspective, that opioids are inherently addictive and dangerous, but that leaving people in pain and facing the problem alone, is perilous, and is a greater overall harm to the function of our society.
The cure to the fetanyl crisis is to forgive patients for having sought relief of their pain, and to forgo the DEA’s ability to limit the capability of a doctor, a nurse, and our healthcare system, to care for the needs of our pain patients.
By respecting people’s autonomy, we can understand that for some people, their pain is so great, that addiction does not daunt them, nor death dissuade them, and that the cause of the fetanyl crisis, opioid use, may be the thing that saves them from the use of dangerous, illicit, and unregulated street opioids. Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family did nothing wrong by providing a safe supply of opioid drugs to the people, but they did mislead people on the addictive potential of those drugs. Let’s consider that perhaps people continue to need the pain relief that OxyCodone provides.
Let us be the pioneers in curing the opioid epidemic, by ending once and for all the notion that pain is less terrible than death itself.
Let California, let someone, lead the way.
Support. Don’t Punish.
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