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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (651494)	4/14/2012 8:52:50 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580603

>> OK, if that's what you want, but why pretend that's what Portugal does? Or anywhere else for that matter. Not even the Netherlands does this. I don't pretend that's what Portugal does. Or anyone else. I have suggested that overall the Portugal model looks attractive; that doesn't mean I think we should do exactly what they do. >> OK, I guess that means we'll continue the drug war on things other than marijuana, we'll still have drug gangs, etc. So there's no need to pretend there still won't be gangs, still won't be law enforcement costs, and so on. When you eliminate marijuana from the mix you take away a lot of it. But yes, there will always be black markets for other drugs. If you provide drug maintenance and replacement therapies and get control of Rx drugs, you'll substantially reduce demand on the street for opiates and benzos. The Meth problem is more difficult. >> It sounds like you want to expand the war on painkiller abuse. Why? Because I believe it is the biggest single problem we've got, and it can be improved without a lot of effort. When you cut off supply of Rx drugs, you'll have a bigger problem with imports, but painkiller abuse can be effectively treated with Suboxone & Methadone replacement therapies. >> We have drug courts now, I have nothing against them. Drug courts are effective, but not universally so. The standards are weak and don't really target the problems they can solve in many states. >> What would they do? Shouldn't demand for services produce more such specialists in time, if more are needed? You would think, but the problem is that drug addicts don't have money to pay for health care. As a result, addiction medicine isn't a popular specialty. There is plenty of money in the system to compensate these individuals. >> Does this mean we'd spend money developing less dangerous ways for opiate addicts to use drugs? How would we get them to use them and distribute them to addicts? This sounds like we'd actually be getting the government involved in drug use in a new way. You can make it more difficult for painkillers to be abused. A little tax credit money would do it. >> I don't know, there are drug courts, there are methadone programs ... at least some places. Marijuana is 'decriminalized' in 12 states - which doesn't mean flat out legal, we have medical marijuana in some states - which works out to defacto legal. Because of those doctors who write prescriptions so easily ... which I think you wanted to crack down on re.painkillers. You would never get past the AMA to control physicians. But you could provide for physician education, which would help. By creating a national database of painkiller Rx, pharmacies could do more to control the problem. I'm not quite sure how you do it, but if you could somehow insure that the person receiving the Rx is the person taking the drugs you would solve a lot of problems. The competent pain clinics I work with do drug testing at every visit to insure the patient pisses hot for the drug they're on; however, insurance doesn't cover it and there is no "requirement" they do this, so many pain clinics don't. Painkillers are a huge problem but the wholesale prescription of benzos is out of control as well. It is just that they don't tend to kill many people and they're not as addictive for most people, but it isn't good that we're raising generations of people who can't function without them.