The Dope Dealer Next Door

Seventy-six billion.  Seventy-six billion doses of death.  That is 232 doses for every man, woman and child in this country.  For you, for your spouse, for every one of your children—that is 232 doses poured down the throats of each of your grandchildren!  That is 76,000,000,000 doses of addictive narcotic handed across the counter—legally—in the United States over the last six years.  The opioid crisis is not a catch phrase used by politicians wanting your vote, to spend your money, to fix a problem that you may or may not have.  The opioid crisis is 76 billion pills (primarily Oxycontin and hydrocodone).  It is also 100,000 deaths from overdose during the same amount of time those 76 billion pills were distributed.  The ruined lives, the abused and neglected children and family sorrow is uncounted and uncountable. 

            Clearly, addiction is the ultimate responsibility of the addicted.  If your life is being controlled by a chemical that you will abandon all morality and ethics to acquire, you need to get help.  No matter how hard it is you need to get your life back—or lose it.  But creating and feeding an addiction is the responsibility of the dope dealer, and right now the dope dealers are wearing suits, sporting college degrees and trying to look respectable.  [A dope dealer by any other name still reeks of feces.]

            The three pharmaceutical companies that provide 88% of all opioids cannot wiggle their way out of this complicity.  The state of West Virginia has been provided with 472 pills for every human being in that state in the past six years.  What responsible company sees this volume and thinks they are providing pain relief as opposed to feeding a beast?  What doctor prescribes this number of pills and thinks they are helping the patient?  Both pharmaceutical companies and doctors know they are not.  They are dealing dope and they know it. 

Neither do these doctors and pharmaceutical companies care that they are dealers.  Why? For the same reason the meth dealer in Pahrump, Nevada and the heroin dealer in Baltimore, Maryland don’t care.  The money is too damn good.  What is worse, while the meth and heroin dealer see their victims face to face, the white-collar dealers are good at putting barriers between themselves and their users. 

            When you look at a color-coded map of the United States, and look at the areas that have been distributing 75-150+ pills per person/per year you see the dark clusters not in our inner cities or major urban areas, instead they are clustered in some of our more sparsely populated counties and smaller states.  They are also areas that have tremendous death rates due to opioid use.  [Coincidentally, these are also areas of high numbers of people who have been placed on disability.  See my June 4, 2017 Blog: "Disability is a $260 Billion Fraud"]  Clearly opioids are being wholesaled to pushers who then take them to the streets.   

            There are a few truths here that need to be faced by each of us personally.  First, anyone who is taking a pain killer on a daily basis needs to ask themselves which is worse, the pain or doing without the pain killer?  Second, a dope dealer is a viper and it makes no difference what they look like, dress like, or where we find them.  Third, proper legislation should be a slow, deliberate process, with much give and take.  Frequently the impetus for that difficult task comes as a result of painful loss of life.  That time is now. 

            Get off the pills, America, and keep the faith, it will help.