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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.
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(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?