By Conservative Tribune. There has been much discussion in recent years about the crisis of opioid abuse, and while there is broad agreement that “something must be done,” there are innocent victims of a crackdown on opioid drugs that often go unnoticed.

According to the Cato Institute, those overlooked victims are hospitalized patients recovering from accidents or surgeries who are in serious pain, but are unable to receive necessary doses of powerful painkillers to ease their suffering.

Rather than being administered proper doses of opioid drugs, these patients are instead being treated with less effective drugs like acetaminophin, muscle relaxers and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, similar to what one could obtain over the counter at a local drug store.

In other words, while these people are wracked with excruciating pain and legitimately require the powerful opioid drugs to ease their pain, they are instead left suffering in a literal “hell on earth” due to government intrusion into the pharmaceutical market . . .

Making matters worse, the DEA’s cuts are fairly misguided, as the real problem of the “opioid crisis” isn’t the drugs themselves, but the results of an addiction to opioids. (Read more from “Gov’t Move to Stop Opioid Abuse Backfires in Horrifying Way… Hell on Earth” HERE)

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Why Some Opioids Users Don’t Fear a Fatal Overdose

By U.S. News. A couple years ago, when local news agencies reported a spike in overdose deaths related to fentanyl in St. Paul, Minnesota, clinicians at an outpatient treatment clinic in that city saw an immediate effect.

“A dozen of our patients disappeared,” says Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer of the Minnesota-based Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “They’d been in treatment from six weeks to two years and were sober.” The patients dropped out of the program to try fentanyl, a synthetic opiate painkiller that was new to the area. “Nobody in their right mind would want to get near fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and up to 50 times stronger than heroin,” he says. “Our patients heard about fentanyl and thought, ‘I want to try that.’ They wanted to recapture the euphoric high they hadn’t felt since they’d started using.”

Luckily, Seppala says, none of these patients died during their relapses. Still, the anecdote helps explain why the deadly opioid epidemic is getting worse; the grim fact is that some people with opioid use disorder are drawn to substances they know might kill them – and not because they’re suicidal. The pull helps explain the growing death toll the opioid crisis is exacting. Every day, more than 115 people in the United States die of an opioid overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. More than 64,000 people died of drug overdose in the U.S. in 2016, and the lion’s share of those fatalities – more than 42,000 – involved opioids, a record number, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid overdoses in recent years have claimed the lives of acclaimed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and the musicians Prince and Tom Petty. Opioids include heroin and prescription medications such as hyrdrocodone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, morphine, codeine and fentanyl. Lately, authorities have seen carfentanil – which is typically used to tranquilize elephants and other large animals – show up on the street. Carfentanil is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times stronger than morphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The grim fact is that for many people with opioid use disorder, the lethality of a particular batch of drugs isn’t a deterrent – it’s an attraction, says Howard Samuels, chief executive officer of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles. Samuels, 60, speaks from experience: He’s been in recovery from heroin addiction for more than 30 years.

“When I was on the streets of New York, when we heard a brand of heroin was causing people to overdose and killing them, we wanted that brand of heroin so badly,” Samuels says. “We thought the people who were dying didn’t know how to shoot it [properly]. I thought [overdosing] won’t happen to me.” This mindset is illogical, but it makes sense to someone struggling with substance use disorder, because denial is a hallmark of addiction, Samuels says. “It’s all about denial and rationalization,” he says. “I was shooting heroin and thought I was still in control. It was absolutely crazy.” (Read more from “Why Some Opioids Users Don’t Fear a Fatal Overdose” HERE)

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