Out of the Loop wrote:
There was a settlement against Johnson and Johnson in Oklahoma this week and Pursue Pharma is proposing a settlement in their own opioid lawsuit(s). This sounds like a huge deal but I am not aware of a single person addicted to these drugs. How big is this?
News of the opioid crisis, to me, reads like news from a foreign country. I’m just not seeing it.
Yeah, it's bad..I live in a state to where the numbers are quite high, and neighboring states are even worse..It's a deep rooted issue
I remember back in HS (13-17 years ago) guys would get "vikes" and "perks" take them after games, or on the weekends, I always had a healthy fear and never attempted, not even once. Plus I accept I have an addictive personality so that too, mixed with highly addictive substances, no bueno. Later in HS, "oc's" started becoming more prevalent, not like the whole team was using, not the case at all, but if you asked the right guy, you could get connected fairly easily. In college though, about a decade ago, I'd say the issue was really starting to steam roll.
Guys I went to college with were getting real heavy into the pill scene. Various Opioids were prevalent, and it was noticeably turning some into zombies. A few ending up failing out, and I know of one in particular who's battling addiction, it's only gotten worse. What's even scarier too is, the users of these drugs are likely poly drug users, some of these drugs have conflicting affects which makes the risk for OD substantially higher. I never heard of fetanyl in 2009 though, not until the last couple years has that name popped up. Now it's being cut into cocaine and other powdered drugs, just unbelievably scary. Look it up, the number of cocaine OD's in the last few years has jumped big time, because of stuff like fetanyl.
Xanax is another scary one. I know people who are prescribed to it, talk about the benefits in small doses, and I won't dismiss that there are probably some helpful benefits for those whose serotonin and other brain chemicals are out of whack, but it's still a slippery slope. HS and College students are surely taking this stuff recreationally, which is all around a bad move. I remember hearing of people I was closer to back in the day, snorting these pills, and I always just thought, "this is NOT going to end well, my god please stop.."
Important to note too, college athletes were easily getting scripts for the above drugs with even a minor injury, or if they had "anxiety" from being a college student. The loop holes and access to these drugs is laughable. They're cracking down on opioids, but others, I am sure is still the wild west.