This is a New Mexico police officer – Ryan Holets – that was a presenter Wednesday night at RNC convention. Relaying a story of him interacting with a pregnant woman who was in the process of “shooting up”… During his presentation … he had to emphasis that in 2018 drug OD’s have declined for the first time in 30 yrs.. which is TRUE… but in 2019 … drug OD’s – according to CDC number count – set a new all time record.
Below is the post that I made on his FB page… and there was some 65 other comments on his FB page and one day after I made my post – copy listed below – did not get the first emoji or comment, even though there was hundreds of comments on his posts. I even put a hyperlink to the article about a 14 y/o committing suicide because of lack of adequate pain management. I don’t know if the fact of 2018 being the first time the OD count was down was his idea as being part of law enforcement, or it was suggested or influenced by the Trump administration.
It is almost as if the community is trying to get themselves and their abuse noticed with a whisper and the anti-opiate groups are using bull horns to get their point across as to all the harm that opiates cause to some people.
your two y/o daughter Hope is truly lucky and Crystal should be congratulated on her 3 yrs into recovery. Unfortunately, you quote convoluted numbers that the CDC & DEA put out about the “deadly numbers” https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html 67,367 is deaths for ALL DRUG OVERDOSES… which will include abt 15,000 from NSAID (Motrin, Aleve, Aspirin). 46,802 involved all opiates – with and 67% were illegal synthetic (31,357) not counting Methadone. That leaves 15,444 that died from Methadone, cocaine, crack cocaine and pharma grade opiates that were legally and illegally obtained. We do not know if the CDC has a breakdown on these deaths or not.. I have not seen them. It is great that 2018 broke a 30 yr record of increases every year but this report indicates that 2019 set a new all time record of OD’s https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/health/drug-overdose-deaths-2019/index.html Those 35% fewer prescriptions written include those that are not provided with many of the 100 million people suffering from chronic pain .. including some 25-35 million that are dealing with intractable chronic pain – in need of some sort of pain management therapy 24/7. Here is just one story of a 14 y/o that committed suicide because she could not get relief from chronic migraines. https://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/obituaries/akaiah-nicole-altstock/article_3d10ddab-b53b-53b3-9cbb-ea56a726ed5c.html
It is reported that 24 veterans commit suicide EVERY DAY… mostly because of untreated pain from their service related injuries. For every substance abuser/addict like Crystal – there are 25-50 people suffering from chronic pain more each day are having their meds cut or discontinued. Unfortunately, no one really seems to care about the two drugs that kill 550,000/yr – those drugs would be Nicotine and Alcohol and they have no medicinal use, but provides the Fed/State bureaucracies with a lot of tax revenue. Addiction/substance abuse is a mental health disease and <1% of chronic pain pts when treated with opiates will become addicted. Thanks for being one of the “good guys” in the “thin blue line”
https://www.facebook.com/ryan.holets.188
Filed under: General Problems
Of course no one, including the CDC, actually has the foggiest idea how many drug deaths there are. Since they count every drug in a decedent’s body as one death, you can have one person dying 4-5 times (neat trick!)*. So if a person is found who apparently OD’d, & that person tests reveal heroin, crack, percocet, & fentanyl (undoubtedly the illegal kind, not Rx fentanyl), they call it 4 deaths. They don’t keep track of how many dead bodies there actually are, just the number of drugs in an unknown number of bodies. They also don’t check to see if the dead person had his/her own prescription for pain meds if a prescription med was one of the substances found in testing. If the perc was purchased from some of the millions of pounds of diverted pain meds (from high up the Rx-production chain) & the OD didn’t have a prescription of his own, they instantly lay all the blame on “prescription opioids.”
For the first couple of years after I read about that, it was so insane I didn’t believe it was the actual truth. I read up on it a lot, & from reliable sources came to believe that that’s exactly what the CDC was up to. I’m old enough now that I shouldn’t be so naive….never underestimate the power of stupidity, or the power of propaganda & greed in politicians & bureaucrats, & money grubbers like killer kolodny.
The stupid; it burns. Kills, too.
Pharmaciststeve, thank you for remaining on the forefront of this incredibly relevant topic. Every day I speak to so many people who are suffering, and read so many pleas for help. It seems like every day we lose another pain management physician and gain another anti- opioid interventionist. I pray to God this will change, but no real change can be made until our government gets their noses out of our healthcare. They don’t have to worry about suffering, so why should they care?
Trump won’t change his stance on pain medication, and Biden already has his mind made up about the CDC being in charge of the opiate “Guidelines”, so I’ve decided to vote for Jo Jorgensen. She actually believes in opiates for pain! I know it will either be Trump or Biden who wins, but at least I can exercise my right to vote for who I want!!