Tag: drugs

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom nannyism privacy responsibility

Pain Economies

Pain Medicine Police

Looking for a new doctor, a colleague of mine called his friend’s primary care clinic, and was told, “We are taking all patients except pain management cases.”

He was thankful his health issues were not pain-related.

After reading Leslie Kendall Dye’s Salon piece, “But what if I actually need my painkillers?” you will easily understand: America doesn’t make it easy for those who must fight constant pain.

Ms. Dye’s story is harrowing. Her chronic pain, the residue of a ballet injury, makes her personal, day-to-day experience not primarily about economizing pleasures, but economizing pains.

So she takes Tramadol. Regularly. Even with the drug, her agony too often returns. What she tries to do is carry on with as little relief as possible while living an active, normal life, always risking excruciating pain levels.

And she’s constantly harassed and inconvenienced and probed and lectured. “Each time I take my painkiller prescription to a pharmacy, I can’t help feeling suspected of a crime.”

She’s not paranoid.

The government is out to get her. And her doctors.

All to “save” the lives of people who “abuse” the drugs.

I read about cases of lost souls, overdoses, suicides, black market pills, portions of towns laid waste by narcotic abuse, and I worry. I worry for the addicts, but I also worry for those of us who would not be able to carry on without responsible pain management.

She admits to feeling “conflicted” about this.

My prescription? Feel less conflicted. Were today’s standard individual responsibility, not societal responsibility, responsible patients would suffer less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pain Medicine Police

 

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

The Wars on Dogs, Drugs, Etc.

China is waging a war on dogs taller than 13.7 inches. The basis is a long-dormant law prohibiting Beijing residents from owning dogs “too big” for — well, for the law prohibiting dogs that big.

In addition to losing their furry friends, flouters are subject to fines but not jail time. In other respects, though, the war resembles many silly but dangerous wars on wrongly banned things.

  • The rationale is contradictory on its own terms. Critics note that small breeds which are not banned (Jack Russell Terriers) can be more aggressive than large breeds which are banned (English Sheep Dogs).
  • Owning the illegal thing is illegal even if no one’s rights are violated thereby, and regardless of the owner’s actual rights.
  • Enforcers of the bad law have quotas to fulfill.
  • Enforcers receive tips from persons eager to cause trouble, even when they have no real complaint to make.
  • Enforcers conduct scary raids, sometimes mid-night raids, to hunt for the non-dangerous banned thing.

Such features also characterize America’s War on Drugs, hardly limited to cracking down on crack houses full of shady characters. On the basis of real or imaginary information, police violently invade homes to search for drugs. People (and their dogs) are killed during such assaults.

What Radley Balko calls The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (officially published in July) has made America’s War on Drugs, a war on people, and dogs, all the more deadly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Government Isn’t Love

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on January 7, 2002. There are tough problems in the real world. Many of them cannot be solved by “public policy” or faceless bureaucracies, but only by people who care about and for each other. Realizing the limits of government doesn’t solve every problem, but it does prevent some problems from getting even worse. —PJ

Recently I joined the growing chorus calling the war on drugs a failure. My comments were provoked by a DEA raid against the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, a place where cancer patients in pain can obtain marijuana that is legal under state law, but illegal under federal law.

Well, I got a flurry of responses. Some said we need to get tougher. A woman wrote: “Paul, the way to stop drugs is to instantly execute people who push it — no trial.”

On the other hand, a gentleman wrote: “Until we start seeing addiction as a medical rather than criminal problem, we’re never going to get out of the bunker in this failing war.”

But one listener summed up what many folks were trying to say. He wrote: “Okay Paul, I agree with you. But what is your proposed solution?”

There are many solutions. The war on drugs hasn’t prevented the damage done by addiction or alleviated the pain felt by loved ones. We’d all love to pass some law that would miraculously solve the problem, but there is no magic wand.

The problem of addiction has to do with individual people and their individual circumstances. And that’s how it must be addressed: Individually, by people who care, not by distant bureaucracies who may do more harm than good.

Ultimately, love is the answer, because love does conquer all. But government isn’t love.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.