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Here in New England, it’s hard to get through a news cycle without at least one mention of the region’s opioid epidemic. Every media outlet covers it; governors are creating task forces faster than you can count; and the presidential candidates expect daily questions on the matter, often from parents who lost a child to an overdose. (Notably, Jeb Bush’s daughter has struggled with addiction for years, and Carly Fiorina’s stepdaughter died of an overdose.)
You do not have to create it. You have to help it along & try to persuade people to take it seriously. The powers of the laws over people reach far beyond the narrow understanding of law in law schools.
Americans really have spread across the world the democratic habit of voting on anything, political or not, including where to go for dinner.
Other examples would be less ridiculous, but if you want some more of this sense of humor: Americans have a habit of closing their eyes to their very undemocratic habit of naming one man to get things done, as opposed to deciding what is to be done. Even liberal organizations, even universities have a CEO, although the constitution creates only one for the federal government, leaving the rest of the country free to do otherwise. But the influence spreads…
Well, you might not be able to create virtue, but you can change behavior. My daughter spending two nights in jail on a pot charge certainly changed her behavior.
And once her behavior changed, and her mind cleared, she became a much more virtuous person.
It may be worth treating IV drug use as its own category – at least in the initial phases in which there is a social component to using, or learning to use, drugs by injection.
The historical record has shown that under schemes by which addicts obtain their drugs via prescription, addicts would divert their legally obtained drugs to initiate friends into drug use, thereby essentially being spreading an epidemic of a contagious disease.
Unfortunately, the record (Sweden in the 1960s) also shows that while forced rehabilitation has worked at least to a degree, it takes many months of incarceration under a strict regime, which would incur its own social and financial costs, not to mention an authoritarian approach not currently acceptable in the US.
Returning to the theme of epidemics, the draconian approach mentioned above is only useful in the initial stages of an outbreak, so barring the emergence of a technological solution, this is only of academic interest in our era of endemic drug abuse.
Well… it wasn’t supposed to be like that at first.
We were supposed to inherit the common-law rights that every Englishman knew about, rights thought so mundane at the time that there seemed no need to spell them out in the Bill of Rights.
And we were supposed to have a government of enumerated powers governing a citizenry presumed to have unenumerated rights. Not a government of unenumerated powers governing a citizenry with only a pitiful few enumerated rights.
Hamilton wasn’t right about everything, but maybe he was about this.
They were not supposed to have the authority to create any law, no. Especially not at the federal level.
Each state in the union inherited the police and parliamentary powers from Mother England. That was supposed to be our US tradition, and explains (among other things) why the most obviously criminal crimes are typically prosecuted at the state level – where the police power is supposed to traditionally reside.
But even state governments were supposed to be constrained by the traditional constraints on police power inherited from England. States were, of course, each going to evolve their law a little differently. But to throw off the yoke of English constitutional heritage entirely and say, “Hey, since we’re states, our legislators can do whatever the [expletive] they feel like as long as it doesn’t violate the explicit wording of the federal costitution,” is not actually traditional at all.
Let me ask you libertarians–do you oppose prescription drugs in general? In other words, many drugs are controlled that aren’t really addicting, but that do have other side effects that non-medical people don’t understand. For that reason, they can only be prescribed by a doctor after an examination for a particular purpose. I think that is perfectly reasonable, and I think it is perfectly reasonable to control substances that are addicting for the same reason. People might want to take them because they make them feel good temporarily, but they don’t fully understand the properties of the drug, just as with other non-addictive drugs.
Addicts are not free, they are slaves.
I advocate using the power of the state to coerce people into treatment for addiction at the point of a gun. I have seen it work time and time again to get people back to lives. They get their family ties back, they enter the community, they are productive.
Saying “They have a right to be an addict” is saying that we are OK with their slavery to their drug.
I am not advocating legislating morality. I am advocating forcing help on people who need it, and who have a brain that cannot seek help. I am for restoring their liberty.
Opposing available-by-prescription-only is not the hill I want to die on.
That said, I do question many aspects of the existing prescription-drug regime, and would not be surprised if a laxer regime (ranging from marginally less encumbered than our current system to totally unencumbered) would be better.
It all sounds perfectly reasonable, but how does it work in practice? You describe benefits. What about costs?
Many drugs available by prescription only aren’t any less dangerous that the OTC drugs available now. The joke goes aspirin wouldn’t even be approved by the FDA if it hadn’t been grandfathered in. Nor does it take much excess dosing on Tylenol to fry your liver. By far the worst drug withdrawal I ever went through came from Benadryl (used at OTC doses). Like something straight out of Trainspotting it was – and no, let’s not go into more details than that!
I’ve also watched several former prescription drugs (rather predictably) become OTC with wry amusement.
And doctors still expect to be consulted about OTC drug usage, too, and for their advice to be heeded.
This is absolutely spot on, though it doesn’t address the needs of folks with chronic pain. The only really effective painkillers are also addictive. I use Tramadol for RA pain. It doesn’t really work very well, especially in a flare. But the alternative is to take something like OxyCotone, which I wil not do. I’d rather try to deal with the pain than to get hooked. Though talk to me again in a couple of years.
We need to develop effective, non-addictive pain medications. (I think Claire had a thread about this.)
Are you saying that the founders did not envision laws being created? Article 1, Section 1:
Of course that requires a definition of legislative powers, but I think that it’s clear there is power to legislate. The word “power” implies an act of force. Perhaps my understanding of civics is at a high school level, but we’ve got all sorts of laws that restrict individual freedom. It wasn’t too long ago we had sodomy laws, of all things. We had laws of conscription that could pull you out of your current life and draft you to fight a war.
Yes, there is power to legislate federally according to the “Powers herein granted”. Those are the enumerated powers, no?
Each individual state, by contrast, inherits the parliamentary power, which in England, is sovereign. But even despite the sovereignty of England’s parliament, the Englishman still considered himself to have certain common-law rights. The Parliament might have the power to override those, but not justly.
Heh, more fool you! Tramadol’s “abuse potential” now means it’s a controlled substance according to the DEA – Schedule IV as of August 18, 2014. Addict ;-)
Yep, I know that. I just wish there were more pain relief for the “new hoops” we have to jump through.
I said above that you have the rights granted under the bill of rights. And the rest is open for legislation. Are we saying the same thing?
Not at the federal level. At the federal level, powers are enumerated, that is, restricted to powers specifically granted in the Constitution, not just “anything that doesn’t violate the Bill of Rights”. Or that was how it was supposed to be. Now, of course, we do have a federal government of unenumerated powers.
Practically speaking, federal lawmakers no longer bother to think, “Is the power we want granted by the Constitution?” Instead, they proceed as if every power is available to the legislature unless someone can prove that it violates the Bill of Rights or subsequent amendment.
You and I may be saying the same thing at the level of each state’s government, which is where police and parliamentary powers are supposed to reside. But even then, while the police and parliamentary powers vested in each state grant each individual state government plenty of power, a state legislature using that power however it wants without regard to the Anglo-American heritage of rights is not acting traditionally (or justly).
You know Manny, what I have observed about people who make your argument is that they always seem to assume that the people who will be passing the laws will be people who agree with their own ideas of “virtue.” When the government starts imposing laws that you find morally reprehensible (say, for example, China’s one child policy), maybe you will come to appreciate the value of freedom. Of course, by then it will be too late…
Understood :-) I hold out some hope for immune-modulating biologics, among others. Understanding pain is not easy.
This problem is more widespread than the NE. A friend of mine works at a Detroit-area library. The librarians have to patrol the restrooms in order to curtail the heroin users from shooting up there and/or leaving used needles. And a recent obit in my hometown paper (NW Ohio) showed a photo of a beautiful young woman in her 30s with the headline “Mother of 3 dies of heroin overdose.”
Certainly I oppose them, because I believe in the separation of medicine and state. I believe in the principle of self-ownership, and reject the idea that I require permission from somebody licensed by the state to treat any condition I have in any means I choose, after consultation with resources I wish to consult, in the manner I decide is best. Many people will want to rely upon the advice of a single licensed physician, while others will want to do their own research or explore experimental therapies. We’ll never know how many people have died because FDA approval of therapies was delayed which could have saved them.
I also reject state licensing of physicians. Let physicians be certified by medical guilds and post their certifications for patients to see. Given that states certify physicians who murder viable babies in the womb, I have no confidence whatsoever in the validity of state certification in the interest of patients.
I also note that the statistics cited about this “opoid medical crisis” fail, deliberately I believe, to distinguish deaths due to prescribed medication and drugs such as heroin which have been banned. Every time the screw is turned tighter on legitimate use of painkillers, those excluded will be motivated to turn to alternatives which have been prohibited, which vary from batch to batch in potency and increase the risk of a lethal overdose.
This makes me so so angry!! 60 Minutes last Sunday featured a segment on drug overdoses and death from the heroin epidemic and said every town in US has been touched – a panel of parents who lost their kids had no idea. One 17 year old in recovery said out of boredom she started with weed (heads up to those proponents of legalizing for recreational purpose), progressed to cocaine and heroin – kids with sports injuries being prescribed opiates – I lived in Boston for over 20 years – beautiful, historic, quaint and now a drug epidemic. Chef Anthony Bordain went back to his old NE town and did a segment on the heroin addiction there.
You mentioned churches. There is a battle waging for children, the weak and mentally challenged. It’s physical, mental and spiritual – the Pope even approved an exorcism for Mexico, the whole country! – since the war against the drug cartels has unleashed a massive wave of violence – their biggest drug customer? The U.S.
I’m reading Patrick Kennedy’s book A Common Struggle – with drugs and mental illness – so much silent suffering – but he is doing great work in the private sector for it. Worth reading and supporting him….I think he would be a great resource for expanding this outreach to include drug addiction not related to mental illness.
Too much needless suffering – we need to be vigilant for each other and the most vulnerable. We can’t wait for gov. intervention and more statistics.
So what are the limits on this? Would you use men with guns to lock up nicotine addicts? What about people who are addicted to Oreos?
Question: Do you think we should make public policy based on sob stories?
Fred – sob stories? Oreos? People are voting down legalizing pot in areas – this is powerful, illegal drugs getting into our country, hooking kids – we’re losing the war on drugs –
Good Lord Fred. You want public policy changed because of your own sob story.
Of course that sounds perfectly reasonable. It sounds like a clean little system where people get safe medicines that they need and dangerous stuff is kept out of their hands. That’s not at all the system we have, nor is it anything that could be created by a government.
What we have now is a system where I need a permission slip from someone to get certain chemicals. But other chemicals, some of which are far more potent and potentially dangerous are sold over the counter. And which is which is decided by politicians and bureaucrats with little regard to their potency or addictive properties.
The result is that pain meds for terminal cancer patients are limited (so they don’t get addicted). The result is that doctors recommend acupuncture for people in need of pain meds, because they don’t want to get branded by the state as pill pushers. The result is that the privacy of the individual is violated when their prescriptions have to be registered with the state.
You need and clean system can’t exist. I hear conservatives talk over and over about how libertarians live in a fantasy land. Well its the statist who live in a fantasy land where they think they can solve complex problem by using men with guns.
Yes. Boredom. People do terrible things when they feel their lives are a boring waste. Drug abuse isn’t the only terrible thing. Even rats use narcotics more when they’re bored, apparently, and less when their little ratly lives are more fulfilling:
^This.
The difference is that I never use sob stories to try to take away someone else’s rights.
To Bryan’s excellent point, addicts are slaves, they often do not possess what would be considered legal decision-making capacity. Yes, some of their decisions are bone-headed and stupid and unwise, but at other times they show clear impairment in decision-making that makes them an imminent danger to themselves or others. Happy to use my license to commit them for a 72 hours eval when they meet criteria.
There are already a significant number of limits, not the least of which is the need for danger to be “imminent.” And the limitation of the hold for 72 hours.
And this is where it gets squidgy. Because as a parent I resent mightily having had to do battle daily the attitude that anyone has the right to do anything they want, as long as they’re willing to suffer the consequences.
Because it’s not just the imbiber who pays the price.
My right as a parent was constantly under assault. I’ll spare you the sob story.