The Current Heroin Crisis
Politicians and law enforcement officials are highlighting a new epidemic of heroin use. As has been true for 50 years now politicians could, but won’t alleviate recreational drug abuse, and law enforcement officials can’t solve the problem, just remain disingenuous about drug abuse, as they have been doing for decades.
This topic has long been close to my heart, and for years I taught a University course in the Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse. So what follows is a different take, hopefully a more realistic and factual discourse on this problem.
The American approach to recreational drug abuse has always been one of “just say no to drugs or else we will fine you or jail you. Nothing could be less effective and more ignorant than this approach. It hasn’t worked for more than 50 years, and it has zero chance of succeeding now. People who are having success in their lives and are contented (both must be true) are rarely abusing any recreational drugs. They have no need to.
People use recreational drugs in order to feel different. What drug they choose to feel different will vary depending on what their emotional state is at that point in their lives. Recreational drug use can be as simple as a couple of drinks to give us a buzz in social situations, or marijuana to mellow us out from a stressful day. What recreational drug we can legally use is determined by what recreational drugs are most commonly used in our society. It rarely has much to do with toxicity of the drug to our bodies. In the U.S., nicotine and alcohol are legal, and they have high toxicity, and are behind many medical problems over time. If you die from cancer it is often from a history of smoking; if you have liver disease it may be from alcohol consumption over a period of time. And so it goes with many related medical situations due to nicotine or alcohol use. In the case of alcohol there is a genetic component. Some people should never touch alcohol.
If we know a person’s overall emotional state we can pretty much predict which recreational drug they may abuse. People have been led to believe, by people who know little about drug abuse, that it is the drugs themselves which are the total culprit. In the case of heroin the notion is promoted that if you take it, your body will be forever addicted to it. This is totally incorrect. Only as long as you have a certain emotional state will you have an interest in heroin. It is basically as simple as that. Heroin and morphine, for the purpose of this discussion are the basically the same thing. Heroin is changed into morphine and the body has receptors for morphine. The body produces it’s own endogenous opiates, which is why heroin has receptors in the body for opiates like heroin. This is also why heroin/morphine are so non toxic. If heroin is so non toxic to the body, why are so many dying from heroin overdose?
First, the vast majority of heroin deaths are from imbibing alcohol when there is heroin in the system. Too much of anything can kill you, including oxygen, glucose, carbon dioxide, too many calories, etc. So yes, there is lethal dose for heroin just like there is a lethal dose for most things we put into our body. But law enforcement officials want people to stop using heroin so they conveniently label the death a heroin overdose, not bothering to mention that the death would never have occurred in the absence of alcohol being present. When both are present, breathing can be inhibited and you can die from respiratory arrest. If law enforcement just wanted to stop the deaths they would be preaching that people should never take both heroin and alcohol together. But that would just mean fewer deaths and continued use of heroin.
Heroin/morphine block the emotional aspects of physical or emotional pain. We still feel the physical or emotional pain but it just doesn’t bother us as much. We would tell a doctor it still hurts but the pain doesn’t bother us as much. That is exactly why the body produces it’s own endogenous opiates. If our situation in life is such that we have constant emotional or physical pain then it doesn’t take a genius to understand why we would use opiates for relief. Nor does it take a genius to understand why telling us to stop using opiates is essentially a waste of time. That is not much different than telling people ‘just say no to sex’. Telling people on heroin to just stop using the drug is really disingenuous. You are really telling them to just continue to feel bad about their life situation and shut up—or be fined or go to jail.
The real crisis in this country is so many people are so little contented with their lives that they turn to heroin to get relief. Under heroin our life situation is the same, it is just that we don’t care as much—the situation does not bother us so much. So why then, isn’t it ok for us to continue to use heroin? It sounds like a good deal to just not be so emotionally disturbed by our life situation. The problem, and it is no small problem, is that we are less likely to solve our life situation if it doesn’t bother us as much. “How can you live like this? We live in a dump, we can’t pay our bills, etc.”? And if your spouse doesn’t care so much about that anymore, the chances of him/her upping any effort to better the living situation goes down exponentially.
This means the current heroin crisis simply reflects a dramatic increase in the number of citizens displeased with their lives—lives in which they see little hope of improving. Thus they turn to heroin. This is a time in history when there is global anger over a wide range of issues with more and more people finding dissatisfaction with their lives. So where is the surprise that there is a concurrent heroin epidemic? It is simply irrational to believe that we can make laws to stop people from seeking relief from all this personal turmoil in their lives. Part of the problem is information overload. People are on their gadgets most of the day getting input which yanks their emotional state in varied directions. The pace of life itself is overwhelming for many, while the economic squeeze overwhelms many people. Shifting religious values upsets a lot of people. Many simply believe all these rights others are now getting have made it more difficult for them to be successful. The lack of community spirit is impacting on how people feel about their lives. It is hard to feel we have control over much when so much of our day is spent in inane chatter with a handful of people. Sometimes all this chatter is mostly limited to close family members (the family values crowd). With all these gadgets anyone who is fanatical about anything can find a a cabal to join without ever actually meeting other members. With all these gadgets streaming input into our brain, the risk of illogical indoctrination rises. More and more people are driven by feelings, not rational reasoning. The career politicians are good at this, push the right buttons and the electorate will react as a politician desires. “You mad? I’m mad too, so vote for me.”
At any rate, however we try to document all these personal frustrations, heroin is always there to help us care less, and thus be less frustrated. The solution is obvious enough. But effectuating the solution is a huge task. Take a typical inner city victim whose life is likely going nowheres for a host of reasons. The only relief he/she gets from his/her dire and hopeless situation is heroin. The solution is for this person to find some meaning for his/her life. If we can’t do this then his/her need for heroin will never vanish.
The cruelty of what we have been doing for years is plain enough. A person is emotionally tormented by his/her life situation. They find relief in heroin. We jail them, at a cost of $30,000/yr and put them in a cell where there is zero chance for them to get any relief in any form. Why would any sane society spend $30,000/yr to torture someone whose life is saturated with emotional torture already? This picture from life’s other side is not very pretty. And the logic here is bizarre. Yet politicians promise to get tougher on these heroin addicts, put more of them in jail, get mandatory long term sentences on the books, and spend more money to find and destroy the heroin market. If we can’t destroy the marijuana market how the hell would we ever destroy the heroin market? Our whole attitude is more one of anger at these people than any empathy for their mental state.
For us to solve the heroin crisis we would have to alter exactly on what we collectively, through government, spend our tax money. Every child deserves to have the same amount of tax money spent on him/her as any other child. This provides a child with a good school and good teachers. Every child deserves good health care. Every child deserves a safe neighborhood in which to live. Every child lacking proper family mentors (parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts) needs volunteer grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. All this enables a child to have a proper formative years environment. Maybe not perfect, but workable. Every child, in fact every citizen, with the ability to do so, deserves an employment opportunity commensurate with their skills. And the job ought to pay a reasonable livable minimum wage or more. And this reasonable minimum wage should rise every year with the cost of living increase.
How can we afford to give them a livable minimum wage when other countries can pay workers slave wages? We simply need to impose steep tariffs on any goods coming into our country made by slave labor wages. Thus if South Korea wants to sell us TV’s those TV’s would have to be made in a company over there which would have comparable minimum wages as in our country. Of course none of us wants to pay more for a TV. But we will deal with this shortly.
In the past, machines which could better do work which humans had to do by hand, resulted in cheaper products and reduced work week hours. No need for people to work 50-60 hrs per week.This was clearly the benefit for having these machines. Somehow all this got lost this past 50 years. Computers of varied sort can now do so much more in less time compared to the past, when humans did the work. Thus, there is no need anymore for people to work 40hrs/wk. If we maintain the 40 hr work week there will be unacceptable unemployment rates. Coupled with non living wages we end up with a grossly unethical and unsustainable economy. The combination of machines to do the work and the influx of females into the work force, not surprisingly, leads to massive unemployment and under payed employees. No society can last long in such a situation. And yes, in such a situation we will have a heroin epidemic. If we spend the money to provide all children with a level playing field in the areas listed earlier, then we have a competent work force available. If the work week is cut back to 30 hrs/wk we have work for everyone. If we have a livable minimum wage we don’t have so many people working two jobs. This makes more jobs available. We no longer then have 60-70% unemployment as now exists in our urban ghettoes. In fact our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes will shrink instead of expanding. When most all people have jobs that pay a living wage, then practically everyone has money to spend and this stimulates the economy and less tax money needs to be spent on welfare. If less tax money is needed for welfare, then taxes can go down and the money we save on taxes enables us to pay more for goods produced by higher wages. It all boils down essentially to greed and our values as a nation.
The last paragraph would need to be tweaked in numerous ways. I have not suddenly become an economist. The end result desired is clear enough. The real talent is in the details. I would reckon that no one can be permitted to work two full time jobs or the purpose is defeated. Companies could not hire people on contract with no benefits, health care etc. A global system would need to be implemented which required responsible reproduction (which essentially means no person could have more than 2 biological offspring. Nothing is going anywheres in the future without a reduction in the global human population. Anyone who thinks the global population can be allowed to double again, as it has in my lifetime, is missing a few screws. A spouse, or anyone I guess, could work half-time providing they did not have another job too. Anyway, assuming all the kinks could be worked out, essentially everyone would have a full or part-time job with a livable wage and there would be a more level playing field for those currently struggling on rigged playing fields. In order to keep this musing shorter, I will not attempt here to go into all the details. I am not even the one to do such a thing.
There is no need to do away with capitalism, but there is a great need to put limits on it and ensure that vast amounts of money earned by some is returned, in due time, to the society from which is was earned, via progressive income tax and heavy inheritance taxes. Genetic welfare (inheritance) needs to stop. There is nothing wrong with expecting all young people, as adults, to earn their own wealth. There is nothing wrong with ensuring that all kids get level playing fields so they too can become productive and responsible citizens. There is nothing wrong with expecting those working at a minimum wage level to earn a living wage. There is nothing wrong with this minimum wage increasing every year as the cost of living goes up. All the arguments against any of this centers around the right of some to pursue monetary greed with no limits. The rights of society as a whole always exceed the right of individuals to harm society with their greed. Remember, almost all successful empires in history imploded because of high income inequality at home and an empire abroad which was too expensive to maintain. That, unfortunately, is exactly where America is right now.
The scary aspect of all this is that nothing is about to be done about any of the real problems facing a global human society. Overpopulation is not being addressed. Livable minimum wages are not being addressed in any serious way, full employment is not being addressed in any serious way. Level playing fields for all kids is not being addressed in any serious way. Precisely because little is being done to give most all citizens a meaningful life, many citizens turn to heroin for relief.
This current heroin epidemic is nothing more than a strong signal of the deeper problems. As long as these deeper problems exist the heroin epidemic will grow stronger at an exponential rate. Human overpopulation and the subsequent human activities seems to be leading to a massive evolutionary correction in the not too distant future. Again, if anyone thinks that the human population can be allowed to double as it has in my lifetime, and there not be dire global consequences, then they are either on heroin, or LSD, or have lost touch with reality, or have limited comprehension ability.
Writing musings of course is not an addiction. I should know, I have been constantly writing musings for many decades. Smile.
