Stop Addict Blaming
Across the United States, we have a drug abuse epidemic that kills over 67,000 Americans a year and puts another 367,000 Americans in emergency rooms for overdoses on drugs and alcohol. Imagine for a moment what would happen should the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) which is a rare and deadly disease started killing 67,000 Americans a year and put another 367,000 in emergency rooms. Why, we’d have pandemonium across the nation with military trucks running public service announcements down our streets and walled off quarantine zones with FEMA hospitals providing aid to victims, not to mention the heartbreaking news images of black government body bags and mass graves.
Yet, addiction diseases are in fact killing and harming people in the tens of thousands every year and just look how we handle the situation, we lock people into prison and jails while offering no real treatment for their addiction and continue pushing upon them the sad and largely false idea that drug addiction is a choice. According to DrugAbuse.gov,
“Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences to the addicted individual and to those around him or her.”
Most of us without any previous knowledge on the subject of drug addiction will first come to the conclusion that the first time someone started abusing drugs puts them in direct responsibility for contracting the disease and yet, today in the United States nearly a third of opioid addicts started out with a prescribed opioid therapy from their doctors, which has a one in four chance of causing an involuntary addiction and doctors aren’t required to tell you the risk.
Whom To Blame?
Should we want to blame anyone for this drug addiction epidemic, shouldn’t we place the blame firmly on those responsible and those that are most profiting from drug addiction, the pharmaceutical companies, and their pill-pushing distribution partners?
Despite substance abuse concerns, the US market for opioids, which accounts for 70% of the global arena, is set to grow from $11 billion in 2014 to $17.7 billion by 2021, according to GBI Research.
And while the opioid industry racks in profits, the economic cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 was $504 billion, according to a new report from The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency that is part of the Executive Office of the President.
In the end, I find it incredibly evil to market a substance with addictive properties such as an opioid for such a vast range of indications. Clearly, when big pharma has mass marketed addictive drugs to an unaware public, it’s not the addicts’ fault when they become addicted to something prescribed by their doctor.
Should you or someone you know suffer from drug and/or alcohol addiction please call us.
Narconon Arrowhead is Narconon’s leading drug treatment center for nearly half a century, and has proven time and again that if a person can identify and overcome the initial problems that lead to their addiction, they can ultimately regain their self-respect and self-control.
Sources:
- http://www.narcononarrowhead.org/drug-abuse/
- https://www.cdc.gov/
- https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-oxycontin/
- http://gbiresearch.com/report-store/market-reports/cbr-pharma-insights/
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/cea-report-underestimated-cost-opioid-crisis/
