This week in the Daily Beast, an article entitled “The Heroin Hearing That Wasn’t”, told the story of several powerful panelists from Dr. Nora D. Volkow to Michael Botticelli, head of National Institute on Drug Abuse and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy respectively. The prescription drug abuse problem is, if anything, worse. Both are “spiraling out of control”. The panel essentially threw up its hands in dismay saying they are doing everything they can but there just isn’t the money to address one of the two largest problems facing America today; addiction and wounded returning Veterans. But that one is for another tirade. The fact is, the war on drugs is bullshit. The Harm Reduction Model should be used as a last ditch effort with an exit strategy (meaning that we should try to get them off of Suboxone at some point), and abstinence as the most successful model in history should be studied and improved upon. Again, every American who suffers from this terrible disease (they estimate in the tens of millions) should have a shot at the premier option; freedom. No longer enslaved by a drug no matter where it came from. Your connection or a new connection; your physician with a whole whopping eight hours of training on how to treat a savvy heroin addict (who will eat dear ‘ol doc for lunch) because he know more than the physician treating about the problem and the solution.
What you also don’t know is that most if not all of the members of that panel were Harm Reduction advocates. They believe that addicts should be put on Suboxone and sent to outpatient treatment. Some believe an exit strategy is a good idea, some don’t. It’s like saying “These toys are broken, give up on trying to really help them”. By the way, the failure rate of Suboxone after 68 days is over 90% with or without therapy. Telling an addict the answer to his pill problem is another pill is really a bad start. I could go on… and believe me, I will.
-Earl
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