Doctors are prescribing highly addictive opiates to patients who, not surprisingly, get addicted then sometimes overdose and die. This happens so often in Minnesota that overdosing on prescription opiates is now a major public health problem, causing more deaths than homicide. Insanely, rather than deal with an obvious epidemic of addiction, we now have the obscenity of TV ads pushing pills for opiate-induced constipation. And you’ll be shocked to hear these poop pills have nasty side effects of their own, like tears in the stomach and intestines. Oh that. I’m sure they have another pill to counteract those side effects too. Which will of course have more side effects.
But wait, there’s more! The FDA has approved Oxy for kids. The profit streams will be awesome if kids get hooked at 11.
Our pharmaceutical system, including doctors, is compromised and corrupted. They actually pretended opiates were not addictive to they could push this crap on us.
Some of the doctors behind the vital sign decision [making pain a vital sign] received financial support from drug manufacturers, and promoted junk science suggesting opioids were safe and caused addiction in less than 1 percent of patients, Johnson said. Meanwhile, drug companies pumped millions into marketing and coupons for free first prescriptions.
“Tell me that doesn’t sound like the guy hanging around the high school,” Johnson said.
How could any doctor or pharmaceutical company say opiates are not addictive? Have they not heard of heroin? Or are they so blinded by greed they don’t care?
Minnesota is hurting.
The runaway use and abuse of prescription opioid painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone has emerged as a public health threat in Minnesota. They now cause more deaths each year than homicides, according to a Star Tribune review of state death records.
Combined with other prescription-related deaths, they also account for more fatalities than car wrecks. Deaths from prescription and illegal opioids such as heroin have risen nearly sixfold since 2000, reaching 317 last year, state records show.