The Opioid Crisis- Eroding Civil Rights Under Our Eyes Do we even notice?

The other major red flag of civil rights violations is the PDMP/ Narxcare.

Fully embraced by our government at the state and national level, I dare say 9 out of 10 citizens have no idea what either program is.

The PDMP (prescription drug monitoring program) is a program in place in every state, a tracking system which logs every scheduled prescription into a database, followed by the evil and insidious Narxcare tracking system in many physicians’ offices and pharmacy chains.

Yale (through guilt by association) and Brandeis Universities’ have quietly accepted millions of dollars in taxpayer money to develop tracking and profiling systems for state and privately held companies that track citizens and assign risk scores to very scanty information available.

All of this has been accomplished without a single patient signature of informed consent.

This system records every patient that receives an opioid prescription, as well as every patient that pays “cash” for prescriptions, in their proprietary algorithm used for calculations as a “higher risk” patient.

The algorithms are very secretive.

We have been able to ascertain that they do assign higher scores to patients via profiling based on past trauma (ie assault, rape, molestation), past arrest, race, mental illness, or disability such as autism or ADHD — all of these even if the patient has never once been prescribed any opioid medication or any schedule 2 or 3 medication.

You will have a high score despite never even having been prescribed an opioid.

The very definition of profiling — ladies and gentlemen.

And the new Opioid Bill that was just signed into law gives robust funding to PDMPs to strengthen their databases.

What makes this so different from the crack epidemic?

I know it has infuriated many people that it seems that money has poured into this crisis while the crack epidemic was virtually ignored.

It is BS. Agreed.

Opioids are different in these ways.

• It can be monetized through the cottage industry that has sprung up around the treatment drug Suboxone and rehabs
• It has reached into the lives of some of the higher echelon people.
• Edit to add this point- there has always been a prejudice against women and minorities in pain management. Sometimes it isn’t even subtle. I didn’t bring this point up when I initially wrote this, simply because it could be an article in and of itself. However, I would like the reader to consider that African Americans, as a minority, suffer one of the most painful incurable diseases, sickle cell anemia, yet are still discriminated against terribly in pain care.

Point two is why it is infuriating to see in relation to the crack epidemic.

It was always going to be paid attention to, simply due to monetizing.

If crack cocaine had a drug that was able to be used in treatment recovery, those addicts would have been given the red carpet treatment, same as opioid addicts — make no mistake.

I have heard the rumblings regarding a “shiny new crack cocaine multitasker drug”.

Please keep in mind the government can invest in whatever they feel like because they aren’t spending any of their money. It’s your money.

They also invested in poop sniffing robots to see if certain neighborhoods were abusing opioids more so than other ones, based on the way their fecal matter smelled.

Another egregious civil rights violation.

I direct you to my other comments on this here– about a quarter of the way from the end of the piece, where I make my feelings on this clear.

However, opioids are drugs that have been used as a party drug in the wealthy white frat houses across America since the late 80’s.

I have only met two people out of hundreds I have spoken to, TWO!, who have honestly told me the truth about their opioid addiction and said that they were prescribed their medication from one doctor and became addicted.

Two.

Those two also recognized they were addicted and not merely dependent on their medication, spoke to their doctor about it and were able to figure out a solution without extreme measures.

Everyone else I spoke to about their opioid addiction either stole or bought opioid meds from someone else, bought street medication, were addicted to something else already…

…but the point is — not a single one of them were actual medical patients when they became an opioid addict.

Not one.

Out of a conservative estimate of at least over 175 people.

However, all the legislation is punishing actual patients.

Why?

Furthermore, now they are mandating that insurers pay for a myriad of alternative therapies.

The frills package.

Things that the privileged always had at their disposal, now are being offered to the masses, en lieu of their medications (the medications that work for them, that alleviate their pain, that is cheap and isn’t a hassle to take).

It’s very interesting that things that always should have been available to people are now being made available, only after teenagers overdosed on fentanyl laced OxyContin.

Furthermore, even though these alternative therapies have not been shown to even work, especially for intractable severe pain, states are feverishly charging ahead with their plans, Oregon leading the charge.

HHS just dropped their tentative recommendations re: the Opioid Task Force Best Practices.

Reading them over, while gratifying to see the CDC guidelines firmly put in place as the unscientific drivel they are, I was not impressed.

They read as though written by a pain psychologist, not by physicians who had thoughtfully read and listened to the thousands of comments and tweets sent by incurable painful disease patients across the country.

I was disappointed, but unsurprised. I expected exactly what I read.

A vague, undefined document full of suggestions with no clear definitions or real guidance on how to achieve goals.

That has been the way for every single document issued in regards to incurable painful disease ever since someone decided they “needed to do something”.

Here’s a thought.

Return the power of prescribing back to the physicians who are licensed and trained to do so, and keep unlicensed, ignorant, profit seeking politicians and lobbyists out of policy making on pain.

That will help patient care more than anything anyone has done in the past decade.

Instead, they will magnanimously declare that now the peons will be able to have massage, acupuncture, aqua therapy, chiropractic, PT, tai chi, yoga, and all covered (somewhat) by insurers.

Isn’t that swell? Pat, pat.

We will require people to try to find an alternative practitioner who even takes insurance (good luck) and who is good at their craft (even more good luck).

Is anyone even allowed to decide they don’t like a practitioner?

What if they are awful at massage or really not a good chiropractor?

I know the one dentist who takes state insurance near where I live is one no one goes to unless one is at death’s door.

I guess beggars can’t be choosy. Is that it?

That is always it.

In fact, that is the whole point of this. The indignation that runs this whole crisis is the point.

Your meds screwed up our kids. This is your fault. Our child is now an addict and it’s your fault. He went to college and he was supposed to be a doctor and now he lives in our basement and goes to meetings. I don’t care if you have pain. If he hadn’t snorted those Oxy at that Frat party he would be fine. It’s your fault. If you didn’t have to have those drugs, he would be fine. You will just have to live with your pain. He shouldn’t have had to make that choice.

— real comment made to pain patient on social media

The millennial parents weren’t expecting this.

They aren’t able to combat this demon. Instead of any kind of meaningful reflection, they have decided (the majority of them) to lash out at incurable painful disease patients on social media and blame them for their child’s addiction/death.

I have sat through seminars where the guest speaker was a parent who started a foundation in honor of their child and the main message is that pain must “be accepted”.

The “need” for pain medication “is over”.

We “need to toughen up”.

That is absolutely preposterous.

A statement like that is said by a person who has never experienced severe, long lasting pain.

I honestly could have said something like that myself, even after childbirth, before my pancreas decided to declare war on me.

Perspective is everything.

People say stupid stuff without points of reference.

Pain is very relative and subjective to everyone.

Hence why it is an unmeasurable value, truthfully.

If my son choked on a chicken leg and died, should I declare that chicken be severely limited because it is dangerous?

I have little family left to speak of.

My life is littered with tombstones.

I know love and loss intimately.

I know addiction and how it can steal a child- intimately.

I am unable to understand crusading on a Prohibition attitude like this.

How will this accomplish anything meaningful?

If your wife lost her foot in an accident, would you want her to “tough it out”?

Would you want her to be comfortable?

Let’s bring perspective into this, shall we?

I doggedly continue to visit politicians and give them factual information.

I have to because I feel I am one of the only ones doing so.

However, the feeling of hopeless resignation rises more and more as I see the media, people I formerly respected, politicians and their cronies, fall into this con.

What will happen?

People will die.

The overcorrection will cost many, many lives. It already has.

Suicide due to pain has steadily risen since 2016…

However the stats won’t be released for another 2 years.

Why such a lag in this world of real time data?

Ask the CDC.

I have no clue why.

Then after a time they will decide enough is enough, and scale back some of this outlandish garbage.

That is the way they do this.

My only wish is that the public would see it for what it truly is- a con of gargantuan proportions, all to destroy our civil rights and health care.

I just hope I live through it.