One big reason America has such a hard time with opiates compared to other western nations is because addiction is a chronic condition and we don’t have universal healthcare, which is what helps those countries deal with chronic illnesses in general. In fact, some of the most effective treatments are so difficult to get without health coverage that addicts in the US trying to kick the hard stuff are reduced to scoring the medicine that helps them do so on the black-market:
[P]atients who have prescriptions for buprenorphine sometimes sell or give it away, which is known as diversion. Some policymakers and officials point to diversion as a reason to further increase regulations. Providers already need to be certified to prescribe it, and there's a cap on the number of patients they can give the drug to. But addiction treatment professionals argue the problem of buprenorphine diversion is often misunderstood. A black market exists in part, they point out, because addiction treatment can be hard to find.
If we could treat cancer with the efficacy and cost we can treat opiate addiction, the entire world would be united in celebration. Instead, the DEA and other authoritarian police forces are expanding their grip on the Bill of Rights, further limiting the ability of doctors to prescribe substances like methadone and suboxone, and of course cracking down on legitimate chronic pain patients, while the GOP dreams of taking away the one, thin lifeline millions of Americans now cling to.
That’s what prompted the survey that found TG387 (and also found VP113 back in 2012). And speaking of which, TG387 seems to have an orbit that fits right in with the other objects!
There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it. Physicists don’t know what it is exactly. But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray ...
- There are easier ways and harder ways to win an election. Hard ways include trying to convince total strangers with clever tweets or shaming the proud and the cruel by sharing posts on social media. A smarter way would be to identify someone you know, someone who doesn’t vote much, maybe they’re not terribly political, maybe they’re young or old or generally un-engaged, and making a day of it. The mid-terms are but a month away. But there’s still time to make it fun with someone. This has the added benefit of committing you both.