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This Bold Plan to Fight Opioid Overdoses Could Save Lives--But Some Conservatives Think It's "Immoral"
With Ohio beset by a massive public health around opioid use and overdoses--more than 4,000 Ohioans died of opioid overdoses in 2016--the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent travel editor Susan Glaser to Amsterdam in search of innovative approaches to the problem. While there, she rediscovered Holland's long-standing, radical, and highly effective response to heroin addiction and properly asked whether it might be applied to good effect here.
The difference in drug-related death rates between the two countries is staggering. In the U.S., the drug overdose death rate is 245 per million, nearly twice the rate of its nearest competitor, Sweden, which came in second with 124 per million. But in Holland, the number is a vanishingly small 11 per million. In other words, Americans are more than 20 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than the Dutch.
For Plain Dealer readers, the figures that really hit home are the number of state overdose deaths compared to Holland. Ohio, with just under 12 million people, saw 4,050 drug overdose deaths in 2016; the Netherlands, with 17 million people, saw only 235.
What's the difference? The Dutch government provides free heroin to several score [where a score=20] hardcore heroin addicts and has been doing so for the past 20 years. Public health experts there say that in addition to lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life for users, the program is one reason overdose death rates there are so low. And the model could be applied here, said Amsterdam heroin clinic operator Ellen van den Hoogen.
[...]"It's not a program that is meant to help you stop," acknowledged van den Hoogen. "It keeps you addicted."
That's not a sentiment sits well with American moralizers, such as George W. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, whom Glaser consulted for the story. He suggested that providing addicts with drugs was immoral and not "real treatment," but he also resorted to lies about what the Dutch are doing.
He claimed the Dutch are "keeping people addicted for the purpose of controlling them" and that the Dutch have created "a colony of state-supported, locked-up addicts."
Your humble Ed (who rechopped the quoting, so head off to the full article(s) to see the full story) adds: of course, this is quite a contentious issue, digging deep into moralistic debate, and where clearly there's little agreed-upon objective truth and plenty of opinions. However, we are a community dotted widely round the globe, and so I'm sure there are plenty of stories of what has or has not worked in different locales.
Previous: Tens or Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Needed to Combat Opioid Crisis?
Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:34PM (10 children)
Or just cut a hole in the fence and walk/drive across to the main road, assuming Acme isn't in the business of private property rights law enforcement as well. Yours is an extreme example, but if it involved a service, the lack of which was more an inconvenience than a necessity, I could see this easily happening, reguarly.
The mistake seems more along the line that competitors don't have enough resources to nearly/completely lock others out of the market. Although at that point, they're more de facto monopolists/oligarchs/owners than competitors, you could say.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:42PM (9 children)
Which of course we know is bunk, because otherwise Standard Oil, US Steel, and the other major monopolies of the robber baron era wouldn't have existed.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:23PM (8 children)
But all of those companies relied on help from the legislature to secure a monopoly.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:00PM (4 children)
They wouldn't have needed to rely on legislature if they were in the libertarian anarchy world, they'd just hire their personal army and we'd be living in another version of Medieval Society right now.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:23PM (3 children)
Without the intervention of the legislature there would have been no monopoly position, and that monopoly position is what lead to them having so much money the could hire their own armies!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:44PM (2 children)
I don't think you understand the very basic underpinnings of capitalism and market forces. The big corporation purchased favorable legislation, they weren't a monopoly granted to a small 5 man outfit that then grew into Standard Oil.
Government enabled the bad behavior it didn't create it, but that goes against the anti-government mantra constantly pushed around here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:21AM
Explain Walmart.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:56AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:46PM (1 child)
Care to explain? What laws did they pass at the behest of each of the companies I mentioned, and how did it aid them in securing their monopoly?
Because right now, your argument amounts to "Some form of government existed in the US at the time that this thing happened, ergo the government must have been responsible for that thing happening." But by the same token, I can blame the Catholic Church, ragtime music, Howard University, and Evelyn Nesbit.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:18AM
Standard Oil is an interesting case, the academic debate still rages today as to exactly how it got it's position. One popular theory is that they gained it by acting as a sort of justice system for the railroad cartel. The railroads had already relied on the legislature to reduce their competition, and there were only three companies as a result. They had already tried to form a cartel and screw the rest of us, but just as expected these attempts broke down quickly because they all cheated each other as well. In this theory, Standard earned their position by making sure the railroads played fair with each other, while all of the above proceeded to screw us. So under that theory the whole situation stems from the legislative interference in the early days of railroad.
There has been some interesting criticism of that theory, and there were clearly other factors. They had a big advantage of accident in the early days, being established in the area where all the oil was being pumped, and I'm sure they leveraged that just as hard as they could. But that advantage petered out quickly once oil wells started being dug other places.
But no matter how you cut it, they wouldn't have been where they were without the railroads, and the railroad monopolies were built on paybacks for campaign contributions and kickbacks.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:19PM
Standard Oil became a monopoly because Rockefeller hired thugs to beat up and strong arm all the wildcatters he was competing with. He literally built his company on violence. Later, much later, the Rockefellers hired a private army to set up on a ridge and machine gun men, women, and children who were on strike, living in tents on private land the union had rented for the duration of the strike at Ludlow, CO. Hundreds more would have died except for the intervention of a train engineer who interposed his boxcars between the guns and the camp, on the rail spur that separated them. The Rockefellers should have been rounded up and shot for that, but they barely got a slap on the wrist.
Violence, theft, and thuggery are at the heart of this capitalist system. People sublimate all of that away and pretend it's an aberration; they will do almost anything to rationalize their comfort and convenience rather than confront their own contributory culpability, but it's there, and posterity will curse us for it.
Washington DC delenda est.