What the hell. Physicians prescribe these drugs because they think that they’re beneficial for the patient.

“Lawyers suing over the opioid epidemic have asked a judge to allow a structure for all 25,000 municipal and county governments in the US to be paid if a settlement can be reached with companies that make and distribute powerful prescription painkillers…”

https://mol.im/a/7144801

Attorneys involved in "Frivolous" lawsuits should be Sanctioned and if done repeatedly should be Disbarred! jmho

Municipalities are greedy. Some are upset because they have a bigger problem with Meth, and cannot get the money.

I would like to see the big Pharm companies to announce they are stopping production of opioid painkillers one month before the next round of elections. Then see how everyone changes there mind about how bad they are.

People need to return to taking responsibility for their actions, and stop blaming everyone else. Government should also get the hell out, totally, of the Dr./Patient relationship. This situation is so screwed up, which is the eventual and inevitable result from government intervention.

American society frequently takes things to the extreme. 10 years ago, doc's caught hell if they "undermedicated pain" ( lawsuits and sanctions).....now they are catching hell because they "over-prescribed pain meds".

If we're not careful the pendulum will swing all the way back and there will be no opiates to give to folks who really need it. ( No pharmaceutical company will want to risk the lawsuits). Who wants to invest in a pharmaceutical company that produces pain meds today ??


What do I tell folks who have severe pain and I don't have anything more than Advil to offer ??


This pendulum just swings back and forth and we need it to stay more in the middle ( the lawyers aren't helping)....mike

I would not worry too much about drug companies. They are selling the solution to Opiate Addiction in the form of another pill, Suboxone. They have plenty of other products to sell.

quote:

Originally posted by CoinRoller:
People need to return to taking responsibility for their actions, and stop blaming everyone else.

This. Right here.

This "epidemic" has nothing to do with providers or BIG PHARMA!!

It has everything to do with the people popping the pills.

Period.

And it has much more to do with cartels smuggling that garbage across the border, particularly fentanyl, than it does with prescription opioids.

Our drug problem has nothing to do with "pills". It is the fact we have manufactured new "victims". We have pandered to them. We've made excuses about why little Johnny just can't quit. We don't lock people up for it any longer. We expect our police to carry narcan so we can revive the same junkies two or three times per week.

We have normalized this as a society by crying out "I hope this never happens to your family" to anyone who says enough.

This topic is a revolving door of excuses.

People hooked on legal heroin? you don't say.

This is a complex problem. Well run drug courts produce results. Selecting the proper candidates and good treatment results in productive citizens. Many drug users are NOT interested in help, and many states do not wish to pay for professionals who have expertise in treating addiction.

Addiction to opiates that started with a severe injury is different than a user who began using for recreational purposes.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
What the hell. Physicians prescribe these drugs because they think that they’re beneficial for the patient.

Devil's Advocate, here

Would that your assertion was entirely true. It is a well-known fact that physicians are often inclined to over-prescribe these days. There is even evidence to suggest physicians have been incentivized to over-prescribe certain medications--including opioids. Just slap something like "incentive doctors over-prescribe" into your favourite search engine. The stories abound.

I've experienced it personally with my last two docs and my prior dentist. I believe they were all well-meaning, but each of the docs, in particular, have been a bit >< too quick with the prescription pad in my view.

This is part of how the entire anti-biotic resistant infections thing got to where it is today. I don't see any reason not to suspect the same forces haven't been at work to help create the opioid problem.

So I'm not entirely certain these cities are necessarily wrong on this one.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
This is a complex problem. Well run drug courts produce results. Selecting the proper candidates and good treatment results in productive citizens. Many drug users are NOT interested in help, and many states do not wish to pay for professionals who have expertise in treating addiction.

Kentucky must be doing a piss poor job at it then. They have a 80 percent rate of recidivism among their "graduates".

It was billed to us in the late 90s as a "second chance" for first time drug offenders. No trafficking. No guns. No violence.

It pretty quickly became a second chance. Then a third. A fourth. A fifth. And so on. Drug court managers pretty quickly learned that to keep their money turned on, they had to fudge the numbers because it wasn't working. If you get accepted into drug court, you're going to by God graduate. Even if you are smoking a bowl during the ceremony. It's all about keeping the money turned on.

Defendants would get caught with a gun and meth. Then they would beg like hell to get the gun charge dropped. And they would be inserted into drug court.

Defendants would get caught with a couple of ounces of meth, and enough anhydrous ammonia to grow 50 acres of corn. They would beg like hell to get the trafficking dropped so they could go to drug court.

Now, its pretty much that you commit whatever crime you want to, claim you did it because you have a drug habit, and get stuck in drug court.

They often piss hot. It gets wrote off with a sanction as an "unavoidable relapse". They go back out to continue doping, breaking into people's cars and houses so they can keep doping, etc.

Hell, a county I used to work in had a grand gala event for its first drug court graduate. They failed to mention that he was under current indictment for trafficking in meth at the time he graduated. When questioned about it, I was told "oh this is different".

Now, they just send people to these rehab second chance sites to where the defendants go out in the community during the day, commit residential burglaries, and then hide back at the "healing center" at night. When the cops show up to take them in for what they did during the day, the centers hide them citing "HIPPA violations, they can neither confirm nor deny that they are there". So, you go through the warrant process, which gives them plenty of time to shift the defendant to another site within the network that they get paid by the state for.

Or the revolving door half way houses that are used for drug treatment. I have one in my jurisdiction that has 2-3 walk aways each day. Some for pretty violent stuff. Not uncommon to have a lot of burglaries and stolen cars within a couple of blocks of the site. Defendants from Louisville will get assigned to the halfway house, and then after a day or two steal a car to drive back to Louisville.

If you put them in prison, this doesn't happen. At least not very often.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky pours millions into these schemes every year. It ain't worth the cost. Take the money and invest in prisons. Bring back chain gangs. They keep saying that exercise is good for recovering addicts. They get exercise and we would get interstates that look like golf courses. We would also save the money we are paying government contractors to mow. That money could also be applied to prisons.

I bet if we look, we could find ways to finance stopping this problem. We just don't have the desire to.

Criminal Justice reform and "saving" money on prisons never works out for the non-criminals, nor does it ever save money.

Yep. Kentucky has a shitty system. It takes YEARS of post graduate training to be effective in properly diagnosing and treating drug addiction. Secondly, the system has to have teeth. What you have is a revolving door and unhappy police that have to deal with the same people again and again. I feel for you having to deal with this stuff on a daily basis.

Physicians and other professionals have high rates of success in beating opiate addiction. The licensing boards do not mess around. You get 90 days of residential treatment and FIVE years of followup observed drug tests if you want to continue practicing your profession. That is in addtion to a number of other requirements. The success rate is quite high.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Municipalities are greedy. Some are upset because they have a bigger problem with Meth, and cannot get the money.

Have they really tried gettin money out of meth? Maybe a meth-themed amusement park, with a meth lab for a dunk tank? Games like “remove the copper wiring from the old refrigerator” or “cook meth on the Ferris wheel” games.

They should think outside the box.

quote:

Originally posted by maximus_flavius:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Municipalities are greedy. Some are upset because they have a bigger problem with Meth, and cannot get the money.

Have they really tried gettin money out of meth? Maybe a meth-themed amusement park, with a meth lab for a dunk tank? Games like “remove the copper wiring from the old refrigerator” or “cook meth on the Ferris wheel” games.

They should think outside the box.

I think a "The Wire" type arrangement would work much better.

I don't think an amusement park would work due to the fact bobbing for apples would never be a thing.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Yep. Kentucky has a shitty system. It takes YEARS of post graduate training to be effective in properly diagnosing and treating drug addiction. Secondly, the system has to have teeth. What you have is a revolving door and unhappy police that have to deal with the same people again and again. I feel for you having to deal with this stuff on a daily basis.

Physicians and other professionals have high rates of success in beating opiate addiction. The licensing boards do not mess around. You get 90 days of residential treatment and FIVE years of followup observed drug tests if you want to continue practicing your profession. That is in addtion to a number of other requirements. The success rate is quite high.

We're throwing money down a rat hole. I'm hoping that at some point the good people will tire of getting their shit stolen, and hammer the legislature to put an end to these schemes.

Have municipalities ever thought outside the box? It is just a money grab.

quote:

We're throwing money down a rat hole. I'm hoping that at some point the good people will tire of getting their shit stolen, and hammer the legislature to put an end to these schemes.

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I agree that what Kentucky has are SCHEMES not effective treatment. Police officers have high rates of addiction, particularly to alcohol. I can bet their rates of recidivism are different. It is the population you are treating and the fact there is no teeth in the system. Simple as that.