HEALTH CARECOMMENTARY
We Hear You: Put Blame for Opioid Epidemic Where It Belongs
Editor’s note: Our five-part series by Josh Siegel about the opioid epidemic and its devastating effects in one poor New Hampshire county generated ardent responses from readers. Here are some of them.—Ken McIntyre
Dear Daily Signal: The first part of Josh Siegel’s series on the opioid crisis in Coos County, New Hampshire, struck a chord with me (“This County Switched From Backing Obama to Trump. Here’s What Happened”). West Virginia is a parallel.
Unions had run the state for nearly 100 years. The Legislature had been Democrat for 83 years. President Barack Obama killed the coal industry for the most part. Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, even had his own coal-killing legislation dutifully passed. The state had become toxic to any business except for litigation-shopping trial lawyers.
There is a huge meth-heroin-opioid-alcohol addiction problem in West Virginia. How do you get there? Well, you also can thank the public school system for teaching a lack of self-worth. The left has ensured that children are fed a steady diet of pro-abortion rhetoric and a history narrative that makes our nation seem illegitimate. Also, parents need not feed their children because schools will do that for you.
If the left can find one thing bad, then everything is bad—except for them, of course.
This is how governments create a Marxist utopia that enslaves people. They are enslaved by false guilt, by the feeling that they are not only unimportant, but actually the problem for the world. Then you take away the Christian underpinnings upon which this country was founded and predictably get opposite results: murder, lying, and stealing.
West Virginia also voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. Coal is coming back and natural gas looks as though it is not heading to an Environmental Protection Agency hellhole. There are those who wish people to remain slaves to them, and then there are the rest of us.—Joan Gibson
Trump performed especially well in counties with high death rates from drugs, alcohol, or suicide. #ForgottenManbit.ly/2rNwZhp
In the first part of his “Addiction in Coos County” series, Josh Siegel quotes former U.S. drug czar William Bennett’s chief of staff at the time, Seth Leibsohn, as saying:
It’s easy to say the opioid crisis is a problem of legal prescription drugs. But most of the deaths of late are not happening that way. Deaths from prescribed opioids are a problem, but the majority of deaths from those come from the diversion and illegal distribution of them.
Leibsohn’s remark begs this question: It is already illegal to use and distribute opioids prescribed to someone else, but we need more laws that will hurt chronic-pain patients?
We now are going from insurance companies telling us what is best for our health to politicians and law enforcement agencies telling us what is best for our health. This is ridiculous. Not only is it another step in the government’s abuse of authority, but also another power grab by the government.—Thomas Skinner
***
I grew up in Berlin, New Hampshire. Josh Siegel’s story is true; Coos County had the highest rate of alcoholism in the state. The addicts just moved on to stronger medications.
At its peak, Berlin had two paper mills and a Converse sneaker factory. I wouldn’t blame all the addictions on lack of work. During that time, Berlin had 42 bars in town. Loggers came out the woods and spent their money on weekends. Now, as the story mentions, Berlin has a hospital, two nursing homes, and two prisons.—Michael Fitzmorris
What a crock. You might take a subject like drinking water to determine which states use wells compared to city water, and from that make an assumption that the state went to Donald Trump due to fluoride. I can’t think of any reason for this article but to suggest Trump voters are drug addicts.—Charles Bardi
***
Addicts likely aren’t voting either way. People in these regions are looking for hope. They hope for change, economic optimism, jobs—anything that will get people working and remove the depression that leaves them with too much time and not enough optimism, which results in people resigning themselves to drugs and alcohol to pass the time.
They were fooled by Obama, but gave Trump a chance. Josh Siegel’s first story in your series ties the opioid epidemic to economic malaise and the decline in manufacturing jobs, implying the solution is not just direct treatment of those who overdose and are addicted, but rather economic revitalization. I wholeheartedly agree.—Alan Mackenthun
***
What strikes me as most important is the caring people who actually do something to try to help others.—Martha Tinker Robinson
http://dailysignal.com/2017/06/18/we-hear-you-put-blame-for-opioid-epidemic-where-it-belongs/?My comments: When a Nation Abandons God and His Word, ever manner of Devastation afflicts it.
No comments:
Post a Comment