If you were sick and you had to chose between seeing a doctor with the skill sets and technology that was available 100 yrs ago
OR.. a doctor with the skill set and state of art technology that is available today ?
Sounds like either a rhetorical question or a down right stupid question ?
Yet our society and our judicial system is functioning on a decision made before women had the right to vote and even before the 18th Amendment … which made alcohol ILLEGAL.. That decision influenced on racism, bigotry and “war on women” made the addiction/abuse of opiates a CRIME.
Medical science today considers all addictions a mental health disease and as a society we still have trouble understanding and accepting those people who suffer from subjective diseases.
It doesn’t seem to matter the advancements of medical science, our judicial system.. and thus our society.. stubbornly clings to those non-medical decisions a CENTURY AGO.
Congress has even passed two different anti-discrimination laws The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Americans with Disability Act of 1900 and our judicial continues to ignore or circumvent those Federal laws and cling to those decisions made during our Prohibitionist Period in the early part of the 20th century.
The Harrison Narcotic Act created a “black market” for opiates.. just like the 18th Amendment created a black market for alcohol.. So we are now spending 51 billion a year and over ONE TRILLION over the past 4-5 decades.. fighting the black market of opiates and MJ… that we created.
It would appear that when it comes to the Federal government and our Judicial system.. they are both part of the problem and trying to be part of the solution… but we seem to be better at creating problems than solving them. One has to wonder if a problem was intentionally created.. so that another bureaucracy could be created to work at solving the problem.
Remember the last war that we actually won was World War II and that took TWO A-BOMBS..
Filed under: General Problems
Boilerrph87: I love reading facts about how America used to treat drugs… Thanks for that look back.
And thanks for highlighting the fact that most research dollars go to fund cancer and diabetes, while things like depression, PTSD, and chronic pain get the shaft.
11/12/2014, Medical research: If depression were cancer
If the extent of human suffering were used to decide which diseases deserve the most medical attention, then depression would be near the top of the list. More than 350 million people are affected by depression, making it one of the most common disorders in the world. It is the biggest cause of disability, and as many as two-thirds of those who commit suicide have the condition.
Depression research also gets a great deal less funding than that gobbled up by cancer. The US National Institutes of Health pumped about US$5.3 billion into cancer research in 2013 — a stark contrast to the $415 million it spent on depression research and the $2.2 billion on mental-health research as a whole.
Jonathan Flint, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, UK, who has been looking for genetic links to depression for nearly two decades, says that some colleagues ask him why he is still working on the problem. “What has held back the entire field is the belief that it’s intractable,” he says. “What is the point of doing something if you’re not going to get anywhere with it?”
Yes, everyone including the govt rallys around someone with diabetes, cancer, heart disease, alzheimers, people go out of their way to donate BIG money to find cures, BUT tell someone you or your loved one has depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, a substance issue (alcohol, drugs, gambling) anxiety or PTSD and well, that’s a choice, they should just snap out of it, suck it up and be like normal people. These people turn to substances to self medicate because our mental health system sucks so bad, no one is interested in donating BIG money for research and finding cures and better med management. And because of their self medication, instead of proper mental health treatment, they’re thrown in jail like common criminals. How many professionals are taking anti anxiety meds, antidepressants or go home and ‘knock back a few’ just to get through through or over their day because they are not able to have access to a good therapist due to their 14 hr day.
KLS..passed in 1914…prior to that one could purchase a syringe kit of heroin in the Sears catalog for $1.50, cocaine tablets for teething pain for children. Marijuana was also legal. Read the entire history. It was not passed to, protect from bad awful drugs, it was passed because people were afraid minorities such as blacks, American Indians and Chinese would do unspeakable acts on white women whole using these drugs. You do know Coca Cola got its name because it did have a tiny bit of cocaine in it to ‘give you that lift during the day when you got tired’ I used to work for Indiana’s oldest running independent pharmacy til the owner sold out to CVS and closed the business in 2007. In the downtown original store, we had a state issued Marijuana license to dispense from the 1930s. I wish I had a pictue of it. Ther was so much historical stuff there. Upstairs in the ‘museum’ was also an old bottle of ‘Terpin Hydrate and Heroin’ for cough made in the 1800s.
“Yet our society and our judicial system is functioning on a decision made before women had the right to vote and even before the 18th Amendment … which made alcohol ILLEGAL.. That decision influenced on racism, bigotry and “war on women” made the addiction/abuse of opiates a CRIME.”
What decision are you talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act
“An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes.” The courts interpreted this to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of normal treatment, but not for the treatment of addiction.
you need to read the entire article