Leaf of Life Blog

Opioid prescription drug deaths dwarf shooting deaths, yet there’s no call to ban Big Pharma

These drugs have been massively over-prescribed over the past 20 years, causing an opioid crisis in the U.S. with thousands of people suffering the consequences of addiction, ruined lives, and death. In 2014 alone, more than 28,000 people died from opioid overdose?—?at least half of them prescription drugs, compared to street drugs like heroin (which are often the cheaper drug of choice among people who started with a prescription opioid).

The pill popping shrewish socialite may be a staple in most sitcoms these days but most people that are prescribed narcotics simply refuse to believe that they can be addictive or bad for you. In fact, more More than 20% people in the US alone are known to use painkillers or cough medicines with codeine in them recreationally and believe that since these are “legal” they aren’t bad for health or addictive.

This behavioer in adults, is of course mimicked bt the kids, that are mislead for the incredible dangerous belief that pills are safe, just because they originate in a lab and are suggested and prescribed by educated and caring doctors.

In America, doctors can prescribe opioids for kids, but cannabis or Kratom are off the table. Is this a common-sense practice of medicine, designed to do the most good and prevent needless suffering, or just another instance of the Big Pharma bias against natural remedies?

This trend should be more alarming. Researchers publishing in the journal Pediatrics found that 60.5% of adolescents are prescribed opioids after undergoing surgery, with nearly 5 percent of patients continuing to use the drugs “persistently.” The authors of the study concludes that post-operation prescribing of opioids are “important pathways” to misuse of the drug.

So why do we keep giving children opioids — drugs that are especially addictive and known killers? The simple answer isn’t because of any profound medical ideas or evidence-based practices. It’s because those drugs are cheap and available — and because the available research hasn’t been stonewalled for years.

Why, indeed, is kratom being attacked as some new danger to the youth of the USA? Ironically, when kids see a product that the DEA says causes “hallucinations” and TV stations say is a “legal high”, they go looking to find some. Doesn’t this lead to the abuse the DEA and Media claim to be opposing?

Truth be told, there is little about kratom use — at sensible, medicinal doses — for a kid to get excited about. It tastes bad. There is no high. It is not dramatic and wacky, like pot. It even has a “ceiling effect” where — if you take too much, as with beer, you will get nauseous. This prevents abuse. So why are the Media and DEA practically advertising kratom to youth?

Something the general and before all our youth desperately needs is finding a way to fit these very useful herbs and compounds into our country’s herbal medicine chest. I’m sure if Kratom’s relative — coffee — were examined with such heavy scrutiny, states might find reasons to ban it, too. People need factual education about the constructive use of herbs, not regulation.