Nationwide Arrests for Opioid Fraud & Prescription Abuse

[Speaker to Animals]

I've never dated a girl that smoked (beyond a cigarette when we would go out drinking). Is it true that girls who smoke put out more?

Yeah, it's not so much that women who smoke are sluts, but that most sluts smoke. Smoking is a marker for character defects, especially compulsive behavior. It also indicates an oral fixation.

So skankhunters probably might want to take note. But women like that are nasty. And they smell like ashtrays, so forget about it.

How can you tell if a girl has an anal fixation?

That, son, is one life's mysteries.

[TheReal_ND]

Oh you'll find out when you try to find out.

Btw smokers are more likely to pick up hitch hikers. In fact all hitch hiker picker uppers are smokers

t. knower

[TheReal_ND]

You keep trying to differentiate between the evil corporations, and the innocent addicts. The demand from the addicts fuels the corporations, and this is literally the most innocuous way to fill this market role without people cutting each other's heads off on video. Please tell me a way to get people to stop wanting to use drugs. Barring that, its either Pfizer or Sinaloa Cartel.

The addicts don't start out looking for the drug. The drug is ordered for them by a trusted physician given the mystical power of healing over their bodies. In the case of kids, their parents order them directly to take it. They never had a choice.

Hmm. I had pain pills when my wisdom teeth were taken out. They gave me about 12 of them. Doctors are fairly reluctant to prescribe to minors much to my chagrin in high school. I don't have the stats, and I don't know if you do, but this idea that doctors are getting kids hooked on smack in record numbers seems like the kind of bullshit scare stories I used to hear in youth group. It probably has happened, but that is not where most of their business comes from. And I'm not demonizing the addicts, I'm just not convinced in this line you are trying to balance. The end result of this crusade if it is successful, and surely you have to know this, is that people will just switch back to heroin, and that people with legitimate pain will not get the medicine they need because doctors will be too scared to prescribe it. I genuinely do not care if an adult not on welfare and not robbing is doing pain pills heroin or whatever. Its not my business. Okee expressed concern about the medicaid fraud aspect of this, which would be a good discussion to have. But this fear mongering is putting people in prison for decades and sick people pain relief. You told me you voted libertarian. You know all these arguments and should not be falling for this weak shit. This is one of the main things libertarians are right on. It seems like you are the one clutching pearls in this thread.

It's changed over the years. There was a time when pain pills were everywhere. In high school I would cop them weekly and that was in a white school. Now there is actual heroin and it's stupid cheap. When I used to slam dope in LA it was six dollars a ballon which is enough to keep the habit going a day at a time until it's not but that usually takes a few months. Most I heard of was six or eight balloons a day. Balloon is just those thin little balloon animal balloons with a ball of heroin stuffed into the end, tied and tag cut off. When I was in LA doing that shit it was what? 05-07. From what I've heard heroin is everywhere now.

[Dand]

I don't get it. So the son didn't make the choice to do the drugs? We should lock people in cages for 30 years for having a week's worth of pills and deny people in pain from getting medicine because your son had no willpower? Hundreds of thousands of people are rotting in prison because someone's son OD'd.

It's not just a willpower issue with opiates. If someone has the willpower or guts to quit cold turkey they can die. You can't willpower your way out of a genetic disposition to alcoholism/addiction either.

In a libertarian paradise where all drugs are legal without prescription things might be good but these drugs are controlled and I see no problem going after doctors that use their titles to become drug dealers by prescribing to people who don't need it.

You cannot die from opiate withdrawal. It is very, very safe to cold cold turkey from opiates, excluding some serious medical conditions.

Benzo and alcohol withdrawal can absolutely kill you.

Thank you, I was wrong and thinking of benzos

[TheReal_ND]

I don't know about dying from benzo addiction but alcohol is possible indeed if it's done acutely. I've heard that kicking benzodiazepines is way worse than opiates though. I talked to a dude that said it left him a jittering schizophrenic mess. After his story I decided to not take benzos anymore and always advocate against it for people that aren't aware of how sever the addiction is. Generally it takes some time and a lot of doses to get worked into that state though.

For me kicking dope cold turkey was kind of hard but it would have been worse if I let it go on for years and years like some people do. I recognized the addiction as something fierce after a relatively little time. I had to sweat it out for about three days while Gone Away was stuck in my head on repeat the entire time. I was weak and gray for about two weeks.

[Ph64]

I don't know about dying from benzo addiction but alcohol is possible indeed if it's done acutely. I've heard that kicking benzodiazepines is way worse than opiates though. I talked to a dude that said it left him a jittering schizophrenic mess. After his story I decided to not take benzos anymore and always advocate against it for people that aren't aware of how sever the addiction is. Generally it takes some time and a lot of doses to get worked into that state though.

For me kicking dope cold turkey was kind of hard but it would have been worse if I let it go on for years and years like some people do. I recognized the addiction as something fierce after a relatively little time. I had to sweat it out for about three days while Gone Away was stuck in my head on repeat the entire time. I was weak and gray for about two weeks.

Actually if you go into alcohol rehab with a serious alcohol addiction they'll dose you with benzos (Valium usually) for the first 2-3 days... Helps keep one from going into the DTs. I've seen people starting the DT shakes, its not pretty, and yeah can lead to seizures and death in serious cases.

[Okeefenokee]

Dad found a needle in a bathroom cabinet in one of the houses we lived in. Showed it to me and told me never to touch one. After that, I found a used needle on the ground behind a gas station while he was using the payphone. I was about four. He took it from me, went inside and told the clerk working that junkies were shooting up behind his store, then took me home and whupped my ass for picking it up after he told me not to.

All the guys my dad grew up with were dying of AIDS by the time I was in my teens. Didn't need more to keep my away from it.

[Speaker to Animals]

I just took a ton of Imodium to taper off the pills. Wal-Mart sells them in bottles of hundreds for a reason..

[clubgop]

I don't want the government going after the users. I want the cartels stopped, or the middlemen pressured into stopping the behavior. What would you suggest?

Surrender to the fact that people have free will and what is being done is all that can be done without going into draconian hysterics. Haven't we seen this movie before.

"Let demand grow insatiably while we spend ever increasing resources to fight a market black, white, or puce, that raise to meet it." Yeah that ends well.

Stop strawmanning me. I never called for anything draconian, and I oppose arresting doctors without a high bar of evidence.

I would like to hear your ideas to stop millions of kids from dying. That'd be great.

You cheerleading everything Brewster post says something else. Talking about big data when it comes to medical data is draconian. And "High bar" of evidence, please, coming from OMG Russia! people no one buys that bullshit.

[clubgop]

GCF:
Also what about the tens of thousands who die from lifestyle related illness? Should be doing something about Fritolay and Pepsi as well? Is it worse to die quickly from a drug overdose or die slowly in a hospital from some kind of cancer or obesity related illness? I'm not a philosopher so I don't know. But It certainly seems like society doesn't give a rats ass about any of that stuff, even though its basically a slow motion version of pain pills.

Again, change the incentives. It's not 'prohibition or nothing'. Look at the reasons for peoples' depression, and mitigate them.

You can usually trace alcoholism (as an example) to some sort of emotional trauma or need. Native Americans come to mind, and the causes are obvious. Overeating is similar - usually traced to "manly" eating habits, or personal emotional trauma.
Smoking is a different animal, because it doesn't address an emotional need, but acts as a kind of pacifier for adults (I am one of them, I know). Tobacco should probably be banned outright, but if we aren't going to do that, then we need societal change to reject it. That's happening, and it's a good thing, but there's always a self-righteous prick that takes it too far, and makes me want to jab my cigarette in their face.

Smoking kills hundreds of thousands of people a year and lung cancer is an exponentially worse way to go than overdosing! Why aren't you up in arms about tobacco? Here's the thing, you are a reasonable dude and I don't think its a moral shortcoming that you smoke, or even something society really needs to address. You know the risks, and you made a choice. But people never take this approach with drugs. Ever. Its always framed in such a way where it is some evil force that needs to be urgently confronted. I hate that. Everyone knows that pain pills are dangerous, and yet they still use and abuse them. If they overdose, I don't see it being that much different than a smoker dying of cancer. As far as incentivizing healthier behaviors, it never really seems to work does it? Americans are among the fattest people in the world, and we use more drugs than just about every society on Earth. I remember seeing food pyramid charts in school, or stop smoking warnings, or got milk ads in magazines, but it doesn't really catch on. Why is it that the worst stuff for people doesn't really need advertising, and yet campaigns where broccoli consumption is aggressively touted fail miserably? I think deep down the people running these campaigns know that a societal change like you are talking about is not going to happen, because it goes against human nature, so they just try nanny everyone with ridiculous nonsense.

He actually thinks tobacco is well regulated and wants to do the same with guns. He also said medicines were well regulated but apparently not well enough. He claims to be socialist libertarian but in the end he is just a plain socialist. There is nothing government can't do, no problem they can't fix and they never make it worse.