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H
ost, Larry Golbom of PAR Radio, has it out for big pharma who market addictive narcotic drugs to America. In fact, anyone who has watched the destruction addiction has had on their families, feel the same. Read OxyContin and Purdue Pharma – Diabolical Beyond Comprehension The genesis is what Larry Golbom calls the marketing of pain as a disease, which has been stunningly epidemic in his home state of Florida. Not long ago, pain was treated as an underlying symptom of a disease and the real disease was addressed. What we have now is pain as the most over treated “contrived” disease in medical history and addiction as one of the most untreated “denied” of diseases. For insight into the making of this phenomena, read this 2001 New York Times piece Pain, The Disease.
Drug Policy Reform – Treatment Magazine Ted Jackson is the editor and publisher of Treatment Magazine, the nation’s leading trade publication covering the addiction treatment industry. Ted writes regularly denouncing the absurdity of the War on Drugs while promoting treatment as the answer to the addiction problem. This current article about reform indicates a growing call for a complete reversal of how America deals with an epidemic of drug addiction that is tearing the hearts out of our families and children while our governments and prison lobbies use the disease of addiction as a pork barrel.
How to fight addiction at grassroot level – USATODAY.com. Even a statesman was touched by the scourge of addiction. George McGovern is on fire for solutions as he discusses a grassroots view to fighting a gripping national epidemic that took his own daughter 17 years ago. George McGovern points out that, on the federal level, not a single government agency working in this area bears the word “recovery” in its name. George McGovern is a former U.S. senator and Democratic nominee for president
Writers in Treatment
Many writers’ lives are threatened by the inability to quit alcoholic drinking, serious substance abuse, and process addictions. Too often writers and poets working alone at home, in a publisher’s cubicle, or in cabin retreat succumb to the deadly combination of isolation and addiction. Writers In Treatment helps men and women in the writing industry suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, and other self-destructive behaviors get treatment for their disease. We produce free educational and cultural events that celebrate sobriety while reducing the stigma of addiction.
Addiction now defined as chronic brain disorder – Health – Addictions – msnbc.com. This is what we at a grassroots and professional level have been talking about. Addiction needs a medical classification so we can simply deal with it at the right scale. In a nation governed by a voting population, majority rules and the majority votes for legislators that say in many ways; let the addicts rot. Can we afford to keep looking at a medical condition in this manner? Even if 10% of the population deals directly with the impact of addiction, that’s 30 million people; addicts and their immediate family. We argue, that when you calculate prison, emergency rooms, homelessness, deaths, lost productivity the costs start to look something like a cabinet level budget. We spend hundreds of billion of dollars annually on the disease by not dealing with it; so why not accept it and deal with it humanely. It is chronic problem that doesn’t go away on its own. Msnbc link by Tom G.
Substance Abuse Treatment in the federal prison system works for the 210,000 inmates it houses. Where treatment is missing is in state prisons and local jails. Those facilities contain roughly 91% of all inmates. If we look at the Bureau of Federal Prisons we see a model that could be used in all prisons. Of the estimated 2.3 million inmates currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons, 1.9 million could benefit from alcohol and drug treatment, which could ultimately save taxpayers millions of dollars, according to a new report. Currently only 11% of inmates who need treatment are receiving it during their incarceration. Approximately 85% of current inmates could benefit from treatment, according to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. The CASA report, “Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population,” shows that 1.5 million of the estimated 2.3 million prison inmates meet the DSM IV medical criteria for substance abuse or addiction.
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