Prompted by: Sensationalized local mainstream media on “Opioid Crisis” again missing the mark completely
Cue in the dramatic music and the serious popular local news voices repeatedly resonating the disastrous monstrosity of opioid addiction.
Inclusively picture the image of a typical medicine cabinet open to reveal prescription bottles now reportedly considered a major source of the problem (i.e. drug availability is the pure source, according to community leaders).
In addition to abusing the word epidemic, the mainstream reason abusers title their next generation of ‘just say no’ and ‘above the influence’ jargon as “Opioid Crisis” — with a constantly echoing ad including a mother saying she had no idea about opioids (heroin in her daughter’s deadly case).
Their tried and exhaustingly failed view points to: http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/gov/departments/dph/stop-addiction/
Hating to be harsh about it (I’m a community supporter), but the literal insanity forming another flavor of the same failed approach requires ‘lighting a fire under the popular asses for public safety’ response. Consider my writing talking softly while necessarily harshly wielding the big stick of the whole truth and nothing but.
I assume unlike the mother in the ad, you know what heroin is — and by extension that we’re logically talking about painkillers.
Word accuracy counts, especially in education, so knowing what opioids are…
Dictionary.com shows five definitions of crisis (feel free to quickly scan through them):
1. a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point.
2. a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive change.
3. a dramatic emotional or circumstantial upheaval in a person’s life.
4. Medicine/Medical.
- the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death.
- the change itself.
5. the point in a play or story at which hostile elements are most tensely opposed to each other.
All the world is a stage, and while that suggests the intuitive first definition, I start with the “play or story” to ironic utility. Most tensely opposed to each other is the valid disagreement over the righteousness of prohibition. During their professional journalistic absence of bias, I never see a hint of challenge against the effectiveness of prohibition (the one failing to create a “drug free” prison system), despite the terribly high degree of relevance in turning a serious health issue into a criminal one by default.
Such prohibitive law keeps experienced users (not just past abusers) away from popularly educating with the actual credibility necessary to best convince young minds without ironically harmful scaremongering bias. 77% of heroin users, as derived from the prestigious Institute of Medicine’s 23% dependency rate for heroin — all from a national total of less than 1% of the population consistently reported as using heroin, according to the most popular government survey cited by prohibitionists — means there is no epidemic (at least statistically on the heroin front), but enough people to properly educate pros and cons (including actual risks) of painkiller use to better prevent abuse.
Sure if you’re messed up on drugs (including alcohol) and you commit direct rights infringement, law enforcement needs to properly react, but that should be the only legal line (cue in my promotion of Liberty Shield and scientific constitutionalism as the necessary judicial remedy).
Our commonwealth has an estimated population of almost 7,000,000 people, but the news intensely stating that over 1,000 people overdosed on opioids between 2012 and 2013 fails to contrast those statistics negating truth in calling this an epidemic. It most certainly is a serious problem for those 1,000+ people and those negatively affected around them, but the waters are muddied.
Should I even try to pull out the (not similarly reported) “Alcohol Crisis” statistical measure for alcohol abuse and tragedy around here? The fights (domestic and bar), car crashes, rapes, and murders triggered by the variable called alcohol — a drug (so not “drugs and alcohol” as ridiculously popularly stated with credible presentation) that you can die from without fear of prosecution? Hypocrisy is widespread to epidemic proportions, and those young minds understand that fact to sobriety proponents’ educational discredit.
Our society constantly talks up sobriety, but I challenge the assertions that sobriety equals supremacy. From my Respect Cannabis basics…
“I have nothing against a healthy preference for sobriety, or even the slight deviation from pure sobriety by reasonable consumption of caffeine, alcohol, or any other popular drug (e.g. over-the-counter pain reliever). However, the notion that absolute sobriety equals superiority is demonstrably wrong as ironically proven by the war on some drugs. Absolute sobriety proponents spanning several decades (and counting) have challenged (and continue to challenge) cannabis culture by leveraging vastly superior financial resources, weaponry, government support, public support, and mainstream media support (all on an international level). The undeniable result is cannabis culture is not only surviving that continuous onslaught, but thriving against it with no sign of shifting momentum to the contrary (based upon the whole truth and nothing but) – epitomizing their hard-earned respect within the ‘home of the brave’.”
Do we talk about the clothes crisis? We’re addicted to clothes. Everyone is wearing them! Over ‘1,000 people’ wore the wrong clothes and paid the price (e.g. skin cancer, hypothermia, etc.) My point is intentional perception alteration is not limited to drugs, but technology in general (nonetheless religion).
People use things to adapt, but sometimes that spirals uncontrollably into abuse.
People use things to have fun, but sometimes that spirals uncontrollably into abuse.
Every person should know the following basics of use and abuse themselves (also copied from my Respect Cannabis campaign basics), importantly noting the need for a hard-line separation of those words to negate disastrously widespread confusion — use is objectively harmless action, and abuse is objectively harmful action (no more “use disorder” and swapping the words use and abuse to prohibitionists’ convenience to ruin literally millions of lives for several decades and counting, etc.)
“1. Stay sober (i.e. avoid intentional perception alteration) upon feeling success during that state of being.
2. Understand at least the synopsis (especially relevant risks) of any method of intentional perception alteration prior to exercising that alteration.
3. Enter the ‘shallow end’ of intentional perception alteration, and increase intensity of that alteration responsibly and only as fittingly needed.
4. Apply understood remedies against unhealthy stress (i.e. apply work or relaxation as needed to strengthen individual balance) to avoid abusing any intentional perception alteration as a destructive crutch.”
If you don’t honor those four simple rules based upon common sense (i.e. if you’re a reckless idiot), then you’re at risk in a way that obviously will also refuse to honor the rules we call prohibition (i.e. prohibition makes no sense). Mainstream society refuses to understand that key point, and ruins their credibility in the process, but also begs the question of whether or not they really even care (or just exploiting another minority group in the “land of the free”).
The prohibitionist U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse ironically righteously stated…
“Researchers have long recognized the strong correlation between stress and substance abuse…” (1995 Stress Bulletin) [emphasis mine]
The source is not the pill cabinet, the local drug dealer easily replaced upon wasting taxpayer money, or the lack of even more judicial regulations against the efficiency of pharmacy operations (as certain government officials are claiming), but the outright refusal for community leaders to point the finger of blame squarely at themselves for failing to create a safe society for everyone — not just a safe one for those benefiting from dominating abusive favoritism that is logically illegal by any true constitutional and patriotic standard.
The real crisis is society’s refusal to change, and anyone ignoring these words should ask themselves one simple question…
On what logical grounds can you justify that ignorance? I have a comments section for a reason, so feel free to express your justice.
Logic dictates that an Entertainment Revolution is forthcoming with the assumption that abusive favoritism does not lead to widespread censorship. That revolution provides the obviously missing ingredient — entertaining education by all responsible entertainers leveraging not only the vastly more granular reach of the Internet stage to maximally reach everyone, but also leveraging the power of advertising not to sell products, but to maximize understanding of the aforementioned four steps to oppose abuse itself. This is not a panacea (abuse is inherent in reality, because imperfection is inherent within reality), but it logically crushes the utterly failed (and mass rights-infringing) prohibition causing high levels of unhealthy stress, so not only fails to permanently even dent the supply of questionably illicit drugs (as the annual U.S. National Drug Threat Assessment consistently ironically verifies), but negatively contributes to demand by that devastating stress against public safety.
If I have to drown in my fully logical view here (wave after wave of common sense expression against conventional wisdom prompts the metaphorical crickets chirping and almost no feedback), then so be it, but I prefer for you to leverage this temporary window of opportunity to understand scientific constitutionalism to respect cannabis (with principles growing out to intentional perception alteration itself). They are both the length of a long article, so conveniently readable (and completely reasoned — literally no spin, etc.)
Without respecting constitutional law, you cannot logically respect cannabis or any other method of intentional perception alteration. Again, that’s the real crisis forming law abuse — the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction — and the form of abuse causing mass unhealthy stress (the real source of the “drug epidemic”).
Shame upon anyone still ignoring that irrefutable truth — so justice.
Ample appreciation to anyone boldly raising awareness of that logically sole path to actual justice and health improvement.
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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