War on Drugs?

The Marshall Plan was, albeit successful, an afterthought not conceived prior to conflict. De'Ba'athification, on the other hand, was preconceived and an utter failure. Maybe a plan ain't needed. There are plenty of lessons on what not to do regarding wars and the aftermath.

The US Military is very competent at blowing things up. Fixing societal ills we (not job of military) have a less stellar track record.

This Cartel thing is more akin, to me, to the FBI bringing down gangsters of the 1920-30's than a foreign war. The issue is that the Cartels are large paramilitary criminal organizations that are unrivaled - much short of the US Military - and Mexico a sovereign country.

Marty, Dr. G, and others are looking to another, perhaps more promising, direction as the answer.

Do we, as a society and a government, have the political and philosophical ability (consensus) and the competence to provide addicts with their fix (methadone, et al) universally and then rehab them?
 
jpdevol said:
The Marshall Plan was, albeit successful, an afterthought not conceived prior to conflict. De'Ba'athification, on the other hand, was preconceived and an utter failure. Maybe a plan ain't needed. There are plenty of lessons on what not to do regarding wars and the aftermath.

The US Military is very competent at blowing things up. Fixing societal ills we (not job of military) have a less stellar track record.

This Cartel thing is more akin, to me, to the FBI bringing down gangsters of the 1920-30's than a foreign war. The issue is that the Cartels are large paramilitary criminal organizations that are unrivaled - much short of the US Military - and Mexico a sovereign country.

Marty, Dr. G, and others are looking to another, perhaps more promising, direction as the answer.

Do we, as a society and a government, have the political and philosophical ability (consensus) and the competence to provide addicts with their fix (methadone, et al) universally and then rehab them?
Click to expand...
Great question. But once again, what do you do about those who have no interest in rehabbing?, or do we just try and save the ones who want to be saved?
 
I'll just add one additional thing and then shut-up a while🤞

Recovery centers have become a big thing around here - I reckon 12+ in a county of 100K - the county commissioners are debating on a moratorium now as there's concern about turning all these recovered, but jobless, folks loose on our streets - nimby.

Anyway, some have the curious policy of no admittance unless an addict is in "active withdrawal" - a fate few can muster for long.
 
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I don't understand addiction to prescription drugs, particularly those prescribed for pain relief.
I've been on a number of pain killers starting off on Tramadol, then progressing to Oxycontin and Methadone to name a couple. Eventually they stopped working so I stopped taking them. Not overnight obviously, and it was extremely 'uncomfortable', but I managed.
What the devil am I missing.
 
The core problem to my way of thinking. flawed though it may be, is the war metaphor. It implies victory or defeat, while ignoring more realistic plans of mitigation. As to the metaphor itself, you can certainly shoot the hell out of a case of fentanyl, but that achieves nothing. Make no mistake: It's a War Against People.

Minimum wage laws that force two people with kids to work two or more jobs each to keep them fed and housed are much to blame. I could go on and on about the public damage and private corporate benefit created by mass incarceration, but that veers a tad too close to politics, and we don't go there.
 
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Go into hospital now, for hip, replacements, heart surgery, amputations, whatever, and all you'll get is paracetamol. Even GPs will not prescribe opium based medications. This is our country's answer to addiction to prescription meds.
Will it solve the problem???
The problem is not the drugs, it is us, somewhere along the way we have changed. Now, it seems, we can't handle life's hiccups.
Medicinal cannabis is now legal here, but no GP or specialist will prescribe it (in SA at least), it's only available via online consultations with online Doctors. I can see where this will lead.
Last nights news did a story on youth overdosing on paracetamol.
Drugs are not the problem, we are - mental health!
But that's another subject, why do so many people now suffer from mental health problems? Is life really that difficult?
limit XS650 ownership, perhaps that will go some way to solving mental health problems.
 
Maybe things are different in Oz, but over here the homeless population continues to rise and the flow of illegal immigrants fleeing violence at homes destabilized by climate change has become a flood. When I was a child the average executive's paycheck was 4 times that of the average hourly
worker. 'Nuff said?

You and I happen to be blessed with a high level of pain tolerance, but individuals vary on that scale as they do on height, intellect, etc. It would never occur to me to question another's character or sanity because of sensitivity to pain. That I can bear it better than the next guy doesn't make me proud, any more than his ability to lift more than I can makes me feel shame.

I've spent some time in Southern Illinois hospitals, first with severe trauma from being t-boned on my bike resulting in a matchsticked femur, most recently due to swelling over the brain stem caused by a freshly discovered malignancy. Pain was well managed in both cases, the first with morphine drip. the second with steroids. Things vary here from community to community and state to state, but in spite of some diagnostic miscues I'm happy with the care I receive.

I can afford to be. Many can't. Starting with the wave of privatization of medicine in the 1980's, medical price inflation outstripped the prevailing inflation rate year after year. When my father was in practice most hospitals were church or community funded. The boards of directors served pro bono. There were usually two chief titles: Chief of Staff and Chjef of Surgery, both MDs. The business end was conducted by an indivdual with the title of Hospital Administrator or Business Manager and their staff of clerks.

Now we have paid boards and a whole fat tribe of parasitic Chiefs : CEO, CMO, CCO, ,CQO, on and on, sucking the system dry. I spoke once with a prominent St. Louis physician at the peak of his career about the issue. He said "Yeah, it's outrageous. A new hire in that pack makes multiples of what I do. I don't want more for myself. I want to see nurses and hourly staff paid more and patients paying less."

Neither of us saw that happening.
 
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There’s a lot of truth in that last paragraph. I’ve watched this transition personally in my last 2 decades in healthcare and frankly it’s caused nothing but burnout in staff and worse overall care for out patients, healthcare should never have transitioned to a business model.

I remember many years ago certain ideas regarding how hospital systems would function in the future started being heavily discussed by us hospital rats and management. The landscape was changing and the concept of being a stand alone provider was quickly becoming a death sentence for many small to midsize hospitals. Systems started becoming the norm and at first it really was ok. It provided more resources and transfer opportunities, there was a feeling of safety and even healthcare delivery advancement. The growth however accelerated and not for the good. Systems started combining and with that came a loss of security and personal attachment. Everything started becoming analyzed down to the extra urinal your patients needed and profits soared for the upper management sectors of our healthcare mega systems. I promise you in the next few decades you’ll see maybe 3 or 4 healthcare providers who run everything in the entire country and they’ll run it as a business model. There will be a few small rural hospitals, there’s no profit to be made in those places.

What does this have to do with the war on drugs and the opiod epidemic? Treatment opportunity and care provider ability to assist these patients. Hospitals don’t like mental health, chronic pain management, and addiction. It’s time consuming and the profit margin is generally poor. My wife and I run revenue and usage charges and people we have admitted for the aforementioned almost always end up in the red for us. Hospitals work to push these people out quickly without proper care and the few who are lucky enough to have insurance or live in large metropolitan areas may be able to receive continued care via small player mental health or rehab facilities. More often, they end up back on the streets doing the same things that landed them on our doorstep in the first place. It’s cheaper in the short term, and short term profit is always the mindset.
 
There has been a lot of advancement in health care in my lifetime, but there has also been significant change in the "business" of hospitals as noted above. Just to give a shining example: Marietta Memorial Hospital (205 beds) is located in Washington County, OH, population 58,000 and the median household income is $42,000. The hospital CEO's salary - in 2020 - was $1,039,719 and he has more VP's under him than a banker.

There are two hospitals locally (one on each side of the border - river). I've found it curious that they are the largest local advertisers in all media forms - more than car dealers and lawyers combined. What for?; a TV ad is gonna entice me to visit the hospital?
 

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Your CEO calls his minions VPs, does he? How modest! 0ur outfit here has him totally outclassed. There's the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Operations Officer, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief Quality Assurance Officer, the Chief Compliance Officer, the Chief Human Resources Officer (HR used to be called "Personnel," but that root word might have reminded persons of their standing; better to use a term that labels their work a resource to be extracted). There are one or two more that I can't recall, but we're paying a whole damn village of chiefs whose first priority is to maximize their take. Clearly their MBAs entitle them to greater income than doctors who studied for years and suffered through internship and residency. And did I mention the paid board of directors? And no, this ain't Chicago, this is way down south in Egypt.
 
jpdevol said:
The hospital CEO's salary - in 2020 - was $1,039,719 and he has more VP's under him than a banker.
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Our CEO was doing 11.7 million until he was publicly shamed over it, he cut that back to a meager 8.5 million, which makes sense considering we are a non-profit system right? Don’t get me wrong, we are the biggest healthcare provider in the state of Illinois and Wisconsin, slated to soon be one of the biggest in the country once the the ink dries from our merger with Atrium health. Our CEO will step down and Atrium’s will step up to the plate, blubbery piece of shit can watch his mother suck cocks in hell for all I care once he’s out, he’s done more to destroy a bunch of wonderful hospitals than I care to think about or can possibly drink away.

Thank the lord that technology has advanced medicine in the manner that it has because the staff taking care of you these days doesn’t have the time nor the practical ability to do it without the technology. Veteran nurses and doctors working inpatient get put through the grinder on a daily basis because their pace doesn’t match up with the speed required by the system, they do a better job, but we all know the fast, cheap, or good you can only choose two line. New nurses get thrust into a whirlwind of chaos and hold onto any object that can keep their heads above water, which tends to be charting, charting, and more fuckin charting. The hospital doesn’t give a shit if you die, they just want good charting before, during, and after. Dot your I’s, cross your T’s, and keep everyone alive until it’s someone’s else’s responsibility. Part of that is the patients fault don’t get me wrong. They all want faster treatment, take no responsibility for the state of their health, and will have their lawyer on speed dial the second you make the tiniest iota of a mistake. We have to spend our days charting because so many people are looking for any damn reason to sue the ever loving shit out of us, not just doctors or hospitals, but nurses as well. We carry our own private insurance these days in nursing just for this very reason as the hospital will skip town and deny any knowledge of you the second the crosshairs come out. This all leads to a massive level of stress and burnout. This all leads to subpar healthcare and subpar staff. That’s a big part of why we don’t treat mental health, chronic pain, and addiction. Not only does it not turn a profit, but it requires a huge bounty of time and veteran skills to properly manage, neither of which we have a lot of these days.
 
46th Georgia said:
Great question. But once again, what do you do about those who have no interest in rehabbing?, or do we just try and save the ones who want to be saved?
Click to expand...
I have never Used drugs and don't believe I ever will .But in the 70 ies I had a good Friend that worked with young people . Still keep in touch
with drug problems under 20. I was there for a while visting him
They had a mansion and it involved a lot of Coercion. The picked them up in Stockholm close to the subway station.
That was where drugs happened then.
Very few had a family to speak of . So the street scene and the friends there was an identity.
Everything they knew.
Back then there was not so much violence in that scene the violence as far as I know happened at the Karate Enthusiasts Kickers as tjhe called them. Beating up predominantly smaller persons.
No guns and rarely knives : But they died of overdoses .and not eating and so.
So when they came they often had not eaten and was weak
And one routine was to take them out on a Hike into the woods. First thing .They had a Norwegian man
doing that. And one kid got fed up with it mosquitoes and Forrest and stuff.
He said -- I refuse to take one more step .That was the Wrong Norwegian to say that to he was very interested
in the Outdoors life and may well have been out there camping still Happy with that ..
So after a day or so the kid had to make another decision . Start walking
After getting back the first night he left stealing a car and heading south He disappeared and a stolen car was found in the ditch south with an empty tank.
Sometimes they found them again and took them back and tried again.
But mostly another one came instead
I was into sports in those years and I thank the lord for that.
Other friends and other values The families is important .. And getting the right friends and hobbies
What I remember of these Youngsters was that they had lived an exciting life . Many told stories of Pranks and other things they had done .not others their age -have done

One told they had an inner tube for a truck .. and towed it after a fast boat .. Hanging on but the swim trunks started to slip off and he could not let one hand go to pull them up -So the boat operator and friend decided to go past the beach with him having the swim trunks " Half Mast "

There was a selection I believe which ones could be rehabilitated .. But coercion was used almost as in the Army

Nice kids sensation seekers .. that with a bad start ..in life had made some poor choices
That is why I think the ones higher up should end up in Jail more.
It is shocking to realize that Kennedy s and Other are making fortunes inland on others dead and suffering

And the HR department that was called Personell -- was it not Slave Trader before that ??
 
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Yeah, Skull, the advocates of deregulation and privatization are following the cookbook of one Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, whose core idea was that any service provided by the public sector which could be provided by the private sector caused "distortions of the marketplace." He won a Nobel Prize for his theorizing, and he and his minions spread misery worldwide. Take a gander at Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine. It gives an international economic history of our times. I'll avoid the charge of politicizing by pointing out that every US administration from Ronnie Raygun, forward, regardless of party or rhetoric, has followed the Friedmanite line.

There's no true democracy left in the United States when both parties are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the corporate sector.
 
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I won't pretend for one minute that I understand what is going on in the United States, but here in the UK the so called "war on drugs" is nothing more than a farce.
I'm quite convinced that if the authorities sincerly wanted to end the availabilty of prohibited drugs here they could do it within a month.
They choose not to, because the current situation is beneficial to them.
While the youth of this country are obsessed by the drugs culture and petty crime, their attention is being diverted away from real issues like the environment and the polarisation of wealth between the super rich and those on a subsistance income.
While Joe Public remains blissfully ignorant, spoon fed by the government propaganda machine, those of us who are more observant and less naive, have witnessed some pretty weird goings on around here.
The asian family who held a virtual monopoly on cocaine and opioids in my local area for over ten years.
The authorities had them "under investigation" for seven years, but when all their properties were finally raided, it didn't turn up any evidence or result in any charges being brought.
Well what damnable bad luck.
Then some guy involved in a local drugs feud got found hanged.
Hanged from his bedroom doorknob by his bootlaces that is.
Apparently the police said it was " the most obvious case of suicide they had ever seen"
If there is any light at to be seen at the end of the tunnel, it's that maybe Joe Public isn't quite as naive as he used to be.
The simple saturation of society by prohibited drugs is causing folk to question what, if anything, is being done about it.
Of course the police still rely on their old tricks, busting certain drugs gangs and making a big show of it, while other dealers carry on unmolested.
People are slowly becoming wise to it, but for the time being, the charrade carries on.
Right.
That's my political rant for 2022 over
 
Jan, slavery was universally practiced until the early 1800s, when Europe began to ban it. But most cultures--not all, but most--acknowledged the slave as a human being who had fallen on misfortune, been captured in the fall of a city, or been captured by piratical raiders. Tunisian and Algerian pirates raided the coasts of Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, Sicily, etc. for slaves well into the 1800's. Thus the opening to the Marine Corps Hymn, referring to the fact that the US decided to go in and kick ass instead of following the European practice of buying off the Turkish pashas who ruled there: " From the halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli..."

Western (American, British, Dutch, Spanish) chattel slavery was unusually cruel and left few opportunities for emancipation.

Then there's serfdom. Couldn't sell a serf alone, he/she went with the land. Widely practiced in Norway, for example, until somewhere in the middle of the 1800's. Like Russia that way, but Russia had a larger population of free peasants.

Your society as a whole is considerably more benign and thoughtful than ours, and though nothing in this world is perfect, I deeply admire the Swedish model. I wish that my fellow citizens will start to vote based on a cold blooded consideration of what's good for themselves and their neighbors, and leave their attitudes at home. But I'm not hopeful. There's a monkey gene at work that mandates dominance of at least somebody. If you want to hear welfare recipients roundly cursed, talk to one. It's all those other people that are lazy, irresponsible, scamming, etc.

Gotta be better than somebody.
 
Hey ECE, we forgot all about those Press-Gainey patient satisfaction forms! In my dad's day if a business manager had approached a Chief of Staff and said "Doctor, I have an idea that will keep our people on their toes--let's ask patients how satisfied they are with our service!"

What the BM would have heard would go something like this: "Hotels are in the business of satisfying guests. Our occupation is treating patients. It appears that you fail to perceive the difference. I believe that we would be better served by someone who knows the difference. YOU'RE DONE! CLEAN OUT YOUR DESK AND GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!
 
Yes Sir Mr Grizid

as Mr Grewth has it

I won't pretend for one minute that I understand what is going on in the United States, but here in the UK the so called "war on drugs" is nothing more than a farce.
I'm quite convinced that if the authorities sincerly wanted to end the availabilty of prohibited drugs here they could do it within a month.

The problem here as I se it is that you cant vote out a lazy good for nothing Police Chief
He is appointed and has the Possibility to look the other way . Not in the society's interest .
But his own .. He wants to go there and stuff doughnuts into his face harassing the honest people.
Not the gangsters .. When I was a kid the word existed " Police Brutality " not any more.

It is difficult to get a Bureaucracy to perform I know of 3 methods
Josef Stalins shooting under performers
Adolf Hitlers having several making the same thing
And Pakistanis Corruption

None of the them is realty usable but many problems would be solved if the Police really was accountable.

This is not good enough we want better results or you will lose the job.
One has to remember that a lot of it is going on with customers and traffic. It is not as with some other crimes that no one knows about again as Mr Grewth has it.

A farce ... Somewhere an acceptance for people getting payed not doing their job. Has evolved
If someone with the Big BMW and gold chains no work -- no legal business
A lot of other traffic with customers
Mostly in places where others needs to go sometimes at schools
Why don't some of them now and then get a steel toe boot in their Mouth Who would complain and where
Better cooperation with the community and more hands on less press conferences bordering to propaganda

Last time I was at the Police station it escalated to the point I lost temper and called the officer stupid
He threatened with throwing me out .. I had to back down and go home Or I would be Jailed
He did not solve the crime I went there for. Was Not interested ..
 

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