Drugs

Our fight against drugs is one fucked-up mess....

Apparently, because of a reformulation of Oxycotin, addicts are switching from the legal, (or at least can be) drug to Heroin and that's seen as dangerous.

From:[Heroin might be the new OxyContin | The Columbus Dispatch]

“The most-amazing thing was how quickly it dropped because they weren’t able to extract the drug anymore. They switched to drugs that were potentially more harmful to them,” Cicero said.

Heroin is more worrisome because intravenous use increases the risk of HIV and hepatitis, and the heroin is often cut with dangerous chemicals, Cicero said

Heroin may seem to be more dangerous but I'm not sure the data bear that out. Opioid-analgesic prescription pain-killers killed more people than Heroin and Cocaine combined in 2007 (the last year I could find that data). According to the CDC 27,000 people died of drug overdoses but 12,000 of those were by drugs made and distributed by the big Pharmaceutical companies.

From the CDC. [CDC: DRUGS1] [CDC: DRUGS2]

Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. The increase in unintentional drug overdose death rates in recent years (Figure 1) has been driven by increased use of a class of prescription drugs called opioid analgesics (1). Since 2003, more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined (Figure 2)

Deaths from prescription drugs are hitting new highs and "Heroin is more worrisome because intravenous use increases the risk of HIV and hepatitis, and is often cut with dangerous chemicals". WTF.

Just why is heroin illegal and "Prescription drugs called opioid analgesics" legal? Which is really more dangerous?

I think we should be asking ourselves just who the real drug pushers are?

tnb

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