those in the chronic pain community keep asking the question…. chronic pain pts and rx opiates are not the genesis of the current opiate crisis. Opiate Rxs peaked in 2011-2012 and have been declining every year since… Since about 2015, the DEA has lowered the Pharma’s production quota of opiates. The DEA has forced the pharmacy wholesaler to RATION the sales of opiates to pharmacies based on some sort of per-cent of total Rx purchase per month.
The DEA was reportedly started in 1973 with 1200 employees and today it is reported that the DEA has 12,000 employees with > 50% sitting at a desk. I have not seen a number of the people at the city/county/state level work full or part time in fighting the war on drugs and it is just not law enforcement, there are various courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jail/prison systems that participate – to some degree – with the war on drugs.
We now also have a very large and growing industry of rehab centers.
Along the way, it seems that the DEA changed their focus on this crisis from the drug cartels – where facts strongly supports – is the driving force behind the increased number of opiate OD deaths to prescribers who are writing fewer and fewer opiate Rxs. It would seem that once a “crisis”
Here is a recent press release from the DEA where a fairly large volume of various illegal drugs were confiscated 2.5 Tons of Methamphetamine and 100,000 Fentanyl Pills Interdicted/seized by DEA
One has to wonder how many of similar quantities of these illegal drugs come across our borders every day… was this just a “one and done” or just one of many that came ashore that day and didn’t get confiscated.
Aren’t we now seeing a similar issue in many states with COVID-19, particularly in some states. In some states the teachers don’t want to go back to teaching in person… even though the CDC has stated that it is extremely safe. COVID-19 initially did, in fact, created a CRISIS, but some states have taken the position to seemingly perpetuate the crisis in their state… at least when it comes to restaurants and small businesses, Big Box stores and large retail corporations had little restrictions put on them to stay open and mostly business as usual. How many states and/or large politically connect groups within the state are going to try to keep this crisis going ?
Filed under: General Problems
Steve Why is it that you an Dr.Kline n a few others can smell the B.S. no matter where you are and debunk whatever is being said and tell the truth in a few paragraphs? To me it only goes to show these parasites coming up with BS arguments are only doing it to make money off there “drug of choice” or trying to change law to benefit whatever there motive is..You make it sound so simple. And it is This is nothing more than a gang of thugs denying medication to the most vulnerable.. WE NEED CHANGE NOW!!
Dictatorships are hard to install unless the politic is dependent, reside under The Constitution and have guns.
I must assume these keep getting kickbacks to maintain the facade from the DOJ/AG’s extremely ‘profitable’ rape of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
In the first cause “opioid crisis” was a lazy and infantile assumption that doctors were “fueling opioid crisis”… THEN opportunists in the DOJ caught onto the fact that, like big tobacco, this also could be used to grab some very very easy cash for some exaggerations of truth and outright lies.