Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday August 11 2017, @11:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-say-emergency dept.

After some initial confusion about the White House's plans earlier in the week, President Trump has followed the recommendation of the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, headed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and declared the opioid crisis to be a national emergency. He has promised to spend "a lot" of time, effort, and money to combat the problem:

Among the other recommendations were to rapidly increase treatment capacity for those who need substance abuse help; to establish and fund better access to medication-assisted treatment programs; and to make sure that health care providers are aware of the potential for misuse and abuse of prescription opioids by enhancing prevention efforts at medical and dental schools.

President Trump also decried a slowdown in federal prosecutions of drug crimes and a reduction in sentence lengths. Activists and policy experts are wary of an enforcement-heavy approach:

Bill Piper, senior director for the Drug Policy Alliance, told CNN Tuesday that stricter enforcement "has never worked" and the President would be "better focusing on the treatment side of things." "A supply side approach to drugs has never worked," Piper said. "That is what has been tried for decades and it has failed for every drug it has applied to, including alcohol during Prohibition. As long as there has been and[sic] demand for drugs, there will be a supply." Trump would not be the first administration to crack down on drug use by focusing on enforcement, but Piper said doing so would play into a desire to "sound tough," not actually solve the problem. "It makes it look like they are doing something even when they are not," Piper said.

Trump also advocated for more abstinence-based treatment to combat the opioid crisis. "The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don't start, they won't have a problem. If they do start, it's awfully tough to get off," Trump said. That sort of strategy advocates for targeting kids and young adults with anti-drug messaging, evocative of the "Just Say No" ad campaign of the 1980s and early 1990s.

This crisis is serious, folks:

"It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had. You know when I was growing up, they had the LSD and they had certain generations of drugs. There's never been anything like what's happened to this country over the last four or five years. And I have to say this in all fairness, this is a worldwide problem, not just a United States problem. This is happening worldwide. But this is a national emergency, and we are drawing documents now to so attest."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:18AM (2 children)

    by dry (223) on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:18AM (#552768) Journal

    The problem isn't heroin, which is actually pretty harmless when used correctly, it's the stuff that they're selling as heroin, due to profit and needing to avoid jail. Latest here is elephant tranquilizer, if you can see the grain, that's enough to kill you. Really easy to mail into the country.
    Best thing is to make heroin easily available. They've been experimenting here, have a clinic where the junkie goes for his measured hit of clinical heroin and suddenly you have these junkies becoming productive members of society.
    The other thing they're doing is having injection sites. Go to a place with medics around to shoot up or snort your drugs. If you OD, you get help right then. No deaths.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:37PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:37PM (#553029)

    A bigger problem is that the "opioid epidemic" isn't drug dealers selling heroin to junkies, it's pharma companies selling heroin equivalents to your mom, your neighbour, your brother. It's legal, state sanctioned sales of heroin equivalents to the public at large. Treatment is one thing, but a bigger one is to make it as difficult as possible to be prescribed the equivalent of heroin in the first place.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:21AM

      by dry (223) on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:21AM (#553061) Journal

      Yea, that's been happening here as well. The problem is that some people do have chronic pain and need opiates to function and they're getting cut off from their legal morphine etc, which forces them to suffer more or go to the street for their drug.
      It's a real problem balancing the fact that some people need heavy duty pain killers vs the pharmaceutical companies trying to maximize profits by overselling opiates.
      BTW, here is Greater Vancouver, BC,