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Rwanda makes its own morphine while U.S. awash with opioids:
It was something, the silence. Nothing but the puff of her breath and the scuff of her slip-on shoes as Madeleine Mukantagara walked through the fields to her first patient of the day. Piercing cries once echoed down the hill to the road below. What she carried in her bag had calmed them.
For 15 years, her patient Vestine Uwizeyimana had been in unrelenting pain as disease wore away at her spine. She could no longer walk and could barely turn over in bed. Her life narrowed to a small, dark room with a dirt-floor in rural Rwanda, prayer beads hanging on the wall by her side.
A year ago, relief came in the form of liquid morphine, locally produced as part of Rwanda's groundbreaking effort to address one of the world's great inequities: As thousands die from addiction in rich countries awash with prescription painkillers, millions of people writhe in agony in the poorest nations with no access to opioids at all.
Companies don't make money selling cheap, generic morphine to the poor and dying, and most people in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford the expensive formulations like oxycodone and fentanyl, prescribed so abundantly in richer nations that thousands became addicted to them.
Rwanda's answer: plastic bottles of morphine, produced for pennies and delivered to homes across the country by community health workers like Mukantagara. It is proof, advocates say, that the opioid trade doesn't have to be guided by how much money can be made.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31 2019, @12:42AM (12 children)
Umm... did you see what they're (The GOVVVERMENT OOOOH) is doing in liberal states? Pot is legal, mushrooms coming soon. Booze and cigs still legal. What are you (not) smoking where you live?
(Score: 2, Redundant) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @02:33AM (11 children)
Cigarettes are all but outlawed not just in progtard towns but all across the country. Don't believe me? Clip a clothes pin on your nut sack and don't take it off except during what would be smoke breaks for a smoker. See how long it takes you to start getting pretty pissed off from what the government says you have to go through for five minutes of relief.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday December 31 2019, @03:17AM (6 children)
What are you talking about? Cigarettes are fully legal (as long as you're at least 21, thanks to new legislation that Trump just signed) in all 50 states. No one is stopping you from going outside and smoking all you want. You just can't smoke in restaurants and other places where it's going to bother people. But boo hoo, you might have to stand outside in the rain to do it. I fail to see how this is a problem.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 31 2019, @03:27AM
No one is stopping you from going outside and smoking all you want.
*cough* [publichealthlawcenter.org]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @04:33AM
Not a smoker, I see.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 31 2019, @07:20PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @10:32PM (2 children)
And choosing to expose yourself to second hand smoke ethically differs from choosing the more direct route enough to warrant government prohibition, how? That's not a smoker beef by the way, that's a libertarian, WTF business is it of the government's beef.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
God DAMN you take libtard to a new level.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:36PM
Eat a dick, lung-nazi.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 31 2019, @04:45AM (3 children)
So you are saying that government regulations have been effective at getting people to quit smoking?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Redundant) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @05:32AM (2 children)
In the sense that finger amputation would prevent nose-picking, yes. That it was a governmental goal and how it was gone about are both still egregiously oppressive though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 31 2019, @03:31PM (1 child)
If you can convince people to vote for a different government, all your problems are solved.
Some day you will recognize that the government is nothing but a reflection [gallup.com].
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @04:52PM
Not telling me anything I'm not already well aware of. People are quite greedy and even more stupid though. Not the people at the top; all of them. Whether you're using regulatory capture to avoid competition or voting yourself someone else's money makes no difference; the cause is exactly the same. Plus, it's no easy task to convince people that selling their liberties for all time in exchange for a cookie now is the height of idiocy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.