The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Senators Gillibrand and Gardner on a nanny state bender

    By artappraiser on Tue, 03/19/2019 - 10:43pm |

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    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/19/2019 - 10:45pm

    Came across a site and articles a few weeks ago noting the media continually conflated distinct classes of types of opioids and trends, such that prescription opioid deaths are relatively flat (perhaps a bit high depending), whereas illegal fentanyl abuse is where the escalation is, but they lump it in with the others. Who exactly that serves or why is unclear, but the charts and info are weird.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 2:04am

    Found a good article frome more respected site that says basically same thing - the media, CDC, industry are misleadingly conflating disparate drugs, sources and trends.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/21/the-myth-of-the-roots...


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 2:42am

    Meanwhile as we toy with pot dispensaries and try to get our shit together on opioids, our "just say no" drug policy takes its toll on the rest of the world:

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/20/the-campaign-...

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 6:45am

    Great, thanks, the more on it the better and full articles definitely better than tweets. What Gillibrand & Gardner are doing for ignorant pandering reasons is just plain cruel and is going to steal quality of life away from a lot of sick people.Who needs this kind of lawmaking? Nobody!

    There are already more than plenty restrictions on doctors still brave enough to prescribe this stuff, the ones that were the problem are mostly gone and that is precisely the whyfore of an epidemic of even more dangerous illegal products.

    Nothing drives me nuts like the stupid Puritan culture of "suffering and pain is good for you" coming from supposed "liberals". I can't see anything here but a cynical "tough on drugs" vote getting ploy at the cost of suffering people, I really do want to say have you no decency?

    This is exactly the kind of nanny statism and bureaucracy growing that makes so many not trust giving power to the Dem party.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 10:10am

    plus there's the cry wolf aftereffect of stupid overreach like this: when a restriction is really needed, nobody believes them that it is. Because they have a record of just making shit up to pander to certain constituencies to look like they've done something.

    Comes to mind this doesn't much help in the Dem effort to sell "Medicare for all" type messaging to the whole electorate. I can just see the GOP messaging: do what the say and let the gummint take full control and then when they have it they will take all your prescription drugs away....


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 10:21am

    another p.s. on This is exactly the kind of nanny statism and bureaucracy growing that makes so many not trust giving power to the Dem party.

    Perfect example to me: those two docs screaming noooooo in their tweeted replies to Gillibrand. You think they trust the Dem party? There's your swing voter right there, Senators (not to mention possible donors), and you're turning them off big time.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 10:52am

    a thought provoking point related to my Puritan meme:

    Puritanical cultures emerge when the rule of law has broken down, when shaming is the only social control remaining. So if you want to know why younger generations are super judgey, it's because they've never seen another way to deliver actual justice. https://t.co/VvtHwZd4JM

    — Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 20, 2019

    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/20/2019 - 2:57pm

    Drug nannies hit the art world.

    https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/mar/22/austerity-forcing-arts-i...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 03/23/2019 - 9:35am

    I know, I know... Sigh, it's complicated. Been going on for quite sometime, got some real savvy activist artists on this one, too, far far more skilled than the "De-Colonize This Place" crew. While it's true the Sacklers do appear to be far from angels, not caring a whit about amoral and some say criminal medical marketing plans, it's not like they were supervillians plotting all out murder of the working class, ala Jay Gould's I can hire half of them to murder the other half. They were just working the fucked up money driven medical industrial complex we have, in the same way everyone else that's a part of it does. To be clear: they are not "special". But it's a meme and they are the sacrifice, instead of the poorly trained docs that didn't object and just believed the salesmen as a majority of them do. I'd like to see this kind of energy put toward preventing what they did rather than attack the attempt to wash ill-gotten gains in philanthropic pursuits. All least they are not putting it into more shitty hospitals and huge medical industrial ops that kill people again like most of their ilk! It's just art, ain't going to hurt that much...


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/23/2019 - 6:06pm

    Meanwhile, outside the box of Puritan moralist thinking. How about questioning whether some doctors even know WTF they are doing, and Congresspersons even less so:

    Medicines for opioid use disorder vastly underused, says @theNASEM https://t.co/djogRaFYEQ #opioidcrisis

    — Arnold Ventures (@Arnold_Ventures) March 25, 2019

     


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/25/2019 - 8:02pm