How To Cut The Taliban’s Major Funding Source
Recently I heard a Planet Money clip on Public Radio about a drug that actually works quite well to help people get off heroin and pain pill addiction. The generic name of the drug is Buprenorphine, also known by its brand name, Suboxone.
In our upside down world it is very hard to get this drug – it’s expensive and doctors are not eager to prescribe it due to challenges and limitations in the procedures under which they are able to prescribe the drug.
According to the Planet Money story, “Meet The Drug Dealer Who Helps Addicts Quit” by Mara Zepeda, people who want to get free of their addictions now often have to go to the street to get this drug. The story goes to on explain:
“…Unlike pain pills and heroin, Suboxone (generic name: buprenorphine) is very hard to overdose on. Addicts can take it to avoid withdrawal symptoms and manage their cravings for these drugs.
People who are treated with Suboxone are able to go back to school, they’re able to go back to work, they’re able to start paying taxes and taking care of their children,” says Dr. Miriam Komaromy, who directs a state-funded addiction treatment hospital in New Mexico. “It’s making them able to return to being a functioning member of society.”
I say make prescriptions for this drug widely available. Support doctors who want to use it to treat their patients. And very important – subsidize its cost. Make it cheap so no one who wants to quit is priced out of it.
It is so much smarter to cut the demand than try to “Drug War” our way out of this crisis. That strategy didn’t work with Prohibition. It’s not working now.
And as an added benefit – doing this would be a major blow to terrorists, cutting one of their major funding sources.
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Wow, if all of this is true, and the side effects are minimal (no nose falling off allowed), then this is fantastic news.
Since, the politicians are scared s______, by the NRA, they at least could get behind this drug to eliminate other drug involved shooting and suicides. If heroin, cocaine, meth, and prescription pain killers (http://www.painkillerabuse.us/content/prescription-drug-statistics.html) are minimized, there should be fewer shooting deaths.
Uh, oh. I forgot about the lobby that outguns the NRA 20 to 1, the Pharmaceutical phalanx. Will they be OK with affordable distribution of this wonder drug
Hmmm.
Agree with dd.
Being of a suspicious sort, is this just a treatment of symptoms, or is this just a legal “high” that would then be traded on the black market like other drugs promising to “treat addiction” in the past?
It seems that so many prescriptions are abused and end up in black markets of their own, maybe trading Taliban funding for further domestic crime is not a smart idea.
I’m not a doctor, and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night, so I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I am concerned nonetheless.
Good questions, Barky, I am also skeptical. We need more details.
I was interviewed for the NPR story. Buprenorphine is a narcotic that can be abused on the street. The drug is showing up in national statistics that monitor emerging drug problems. CESAR, a center at the University of Maryland, has a published research report on the emerging buprenorphine epidemic in the U.S. Check out the CESAR FAX series on this drug at http://www.cesar.umd.edu.
Oh, well, it was a nice fantasy.
IV drug users also buy antibiotics on the street to treat infections related to drug use. Treatment is cheaper than prison or death…
Prices charged Americans by the Drug Industry are criminal. Not borderline… they’re felonious.
Twenty minutes from my home I can buy 3 – Albuterol Inhalers for $4.85. Price at a Pharmacy in the U.S. $30 to $60 each.
$5 in Mexico… $180 in the good old U. S. of A. criminal I tell you, criminal.
SteveK: market forces apply. They charge us more because they can.
(yeah, it’s criminal)
You are right to be angry, the differential is ridiculous.
You were able to get the CFC inhalers for about 8-10 bucks in the US a couple of years ago. I don’t know if that’s what they have in Mexico now.
Anyway the UN decided to protect the ozone layer by mandating a change to CFC-free inhalers which had the effect of making almost all inhalers name brand instead of generic, since the propellants were all new formulations. Of course Big Pharma was happy to go along. IMO the decision was misguided as the ones it hurt the most of all were low income asthmatics.
You can get #30 generic 500 mg cephalexin for 4 bucks at WalMart by the way. I think that is the preferred antibiotic for IV drug abusers. Still have to have a prescription though.
Salbutamol, Mexican Albuterol, uses HFA as a propellant. FWIW it’s made in China which leads me to wonder why WalMart isn’t selling it.
@dduck I’m not angry about it because I live 12 miles from the border!
Once every three months I drive the 45 minute round trip. I pick up a 3-pack of Albuterol, 100 cápsulas de penicilina and “una botella de brandy Presidente” and get change for my $20! It makes for an enjoyable morning.
I’m saddened to hear that this drug is actually being abused. In any event, I have read blogs suggesting (not sure if I agree completely yet, but the suggestions are compelling) that the reason that we keep up an ineffective ‘war on drugs’ is because it allows our corrupt leaders to re-enslave black males. The vast majority of people sent to prison for drug-related crimes are African-American. Coincidentally, the prison population is being farmed out to private businesses. In addition, many states are switching to for-profit prisons.
Just sayin’
Rcoutme, in addition to your point, there is another reason why the war on drugs is profitable. Asset forfeiture laws, which are in effect legalized robbery of a persons possessions which are then resold with profits going back to the police depts. Yes, corruption is this bad and this much in the open. What will it take to get the sheep to wake up?
Apparently a LOT!
I’m also saddened that Suboxone is being abused. I still think that if doctors were able to treat more patients with the drug to fight addiction it is all to the good. Anything can and is being abused.
We have to find a better way to deal with people with addictions. Even many police say the drug war isn’t working. The lock everyone up approach is a huge cost to our society – breaking up families, devastating communities, perverting our Constitutional rights, and it doesn’t work!
I, fortunately, am fairly ignorant about the practical aspects of illicit drug use, but I have a few questions.:
(a) Does the Methadone treatment program work well, sort of, not at all?
(b)If it works, could a Sub program be designed? Would it be a waste of time or some help.
(c)Does the use of “treatment” drugs lessen the supply demand level of the illicit (read, currently illegal)drugs?
(e) Can Sub be manufactured illegally (like Meth) and cheaply so that it would become preferred over the other imported stuff?
(f) Would that just make a newer and worse problem?
Somewhat of an answer to dduck: Treatment programs (from what I have read, but I do not, unfortunately, have the references) are FAR MORE LIKELY to work than incarceration.
Rcoutme is right from what I’ve heard over the years treatment is much more likely to work than prison. Sorry I also don’t have citations, though.
Treatment also has less stigma and less negative affect on the addicted person’s family and community. They are also more likely to get/keep jobs and add to society rather than learning new law breaking skills in prison.
Thanks guys, I guess I was looking for street experiences and views. Of course treatment is better than prison and probably cheaper, but I wonder about its effectiveness, which I hope is good.