People are Changing Their Minds About Drug Legalization
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People are Changing Their Minds About Drug Legalization

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legalization of drugsWhile I fully support taking the stigma out of addiction, I sometimes question if the push to make non-addicts understand the disease has left them just as confused. Take a recent piece in Vox, which discusses Real Clear Policy editor Robert VerBruggen’s shifting stance on drug legalization. VerBruggen, a Libertarian and former supporter of legalization, admits that he never thought that making drugs legal would cause addiction to rise that much but the country’s spike in overdoses over the last 15 years has caused him to change his tune. Even without legalization, he sees that the phenomenon of doctors turning to powerful opiates as a first line treatment for a wide variety of ailments have shown to have devastating effects.

And he’s right. Even though I am in recovery, I am for the legalization of marijuana because I would prefer that the government spend money on educating people about addiction and the effects of alcohol and drugs than on trying to police it. But loosening of the reigns on prescription pain medication has made hardcore narcotics that lead to heroin addiction status quo.

Here’s Where It Gets Frustrating

The author of the piece, German Lopez, points out that the rise in opioid use may be due to doctors telling their patients that the medication they are prescribing them is safe.

First of all, I don’t think a doctor as ever written handed a prescription for fentanyl to a patient and with a warm smile and said, “Don’t worry, this is perfectly safe.” I am not saying every doctor warns their patients about the dangers of addiction (putting the fear of God in someone who is in acute pain isn’t standard bedside manner). But you would have to have been living under a proverbial rock for the last five years to not be aware of the dangers of Oxycontin, fentanyl and Vicodin, as they have been well documented as major contributors to addiction and death.

Even if you are Encino Man and assume that anything your doctor gives you is safe to take in any amount, there are some hard-to-ignore signposts, from prescription pad to pharmacy pick-up, that indicate what you are about to ingest is not baby aspirin.

Consider this: when you get a prescription for a controlled substance, the doctor typically isn’t allowed to just call it in—you have to physically go pick up the piece of paper and bring it into a pharmacy to be filled. And this probably isn’t even a Rite Aid or CVS; many mainstream pharmacies have stopped carrying these drugs (to avoid being robbed, I assume). After that, whatever pharmacy you end up at will usually ask a bunch of questions and often require you to show a photo ID. Then they ask if you have any questions about the medication, tell you about any noteworthy side effects, warn you to only take it as prescribed, have you sign something indicating you understand the medication you are taking and finally, send you home with a small tree worth of paperwork about the drug.

So if people claim not to know the drug they were prescribed had a high risk of dependence if not taken as directed, how is that anyone else’s fault?

Opiates: A Mixed Bag

Opiates can, of course, be extremely useful and beneficial for patients in high levels of pain—burn victims, people with broken bones and those recovering from surgery. There are also rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia sufferers who can’t function without a super-powered pain reliever; and opiates are just that. But there is a serious grey area when it comes to pain because it is generally self-diagnosed and addicted opiate seekers can be damn good actors. A doctor’s only indication of the level of pain someone is in is by what that person reports or by what the typical pain level is for that ailment. In other words, prescribing medication for pain is far from a perfect science.

Ultimately, however, we can’t really blame doctors or legalization for addiction. While both VerBruggen and Lopez make decent points about why overdoses have sky rocketed, the real problem is that it’s somehow become highly acceptable in modern day America to not take personal responsibility for your actions. I blame this on consumerism (which I blame almost everything on) and a system that encourages people do whatever they can to make money: lie to people, rip them off, or worse, say nothing. It’s okay to market soda to kids because it will make them happy and the parents won’t look into what their kids are actually drinking.

So if you are like me and never, ever, ever read the Terms and Conditions, the time has come for us to accept responsibility for what we are eating, drinking and taking so that when we get screwed, the onus is on us. The same is true for addiction.

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About Author

Danielle Stewart is a Los Angeles-based writer and recovering comedian. She has written for Showtime, E!, and MTV, as well as print publications such as Us Weekly and Life & Style Magazine. She returned to school and is currently working her way towards a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. She loves coffee, Law & Order SVU, and her emotional support dog, Benson.