by Barry Ha
stings
It’s clearly a major problem. Our already filthy-rich drug-making corporations (“Medicine is what they do”), are very deeply involved in the tsunami of opiates/opioids (as you will), and intentionally manufacture far more of them than common sense tells us is legitimate.
I recently watched a piece on 60 Minutes; They were investigating a small pharmacy, in a very small (don’t blink) town in mountainous West Virginia. The pharmacy was setting hundreds of thousands of opiate tablets, often many tens of thousands daily, apparently to those “in the know“ or anyone else. Some “clients“ often had riven a long way. They’re all addicted to factory-made opiates. It turns out, the small state is shot through with one of the nation’s biggest drug addiction problems.
New England, as well, is flooded with cheap heroin (competing with manufactured opiates), and in deep trouble trying to deal with it. They’re not the only ones, it’s a national scandal in the making, as more, and more families come to realize how these manufacturers could obviously see what’s happening, and just kept raking in the profits. Our own state is seeing increasing numbers of addicts… and overdose deaths. Those studying the problem closely, estimate 22/23 million Americans have substance abuse problems great enough to “need help.”
The manufacturers all but begged criminals to get aboard, through huge over-production and loose record-keeping (I’d guess). They chose to “make hay while the sun shines,” and to addict (fast-growing) numbers; young, old… millions of your children, or theirs, now addicted. The manufacturers don’t care, not a whit; they just wanna’ make money, MONEY, BABY.
Some bereaved family, or other victim(s) of this abuse, should bring a lawsuit Or maybe even criminal charges, I’m sad to see the Federal government ignoring the source of the tablets and pills. These people are largely responsible for tens of thousands deaths, a larger measure of bereaved friends, family. The addicts are people who might get along OK if they can get their fix, but deprived of it are exactly as bad off as the worst heroin addict in the same conditions. You can be certain they’ll go bonkers.
People hesitate to talk about these problems, then delay, then pay. You never see the fact of “killed by drug abuse and family failure to intervene,” in obituaries. Let me tell you a sad (and true) story. My (once promising, highly skilled wood-carver and cabinet-maker) son died under the board
walk in Atlantic City, NJ., during a very warm summer in the mid-1980s. Police there found his body following complaints of “a stench strong enough to bring tears,” along a short stretch of waterfront retail shops. Nantucket police officer friends (I covered the “police beat,” often rode with them, some played on my fast-pitch softball team), found me at a friend’s house with the news. It stunned me, never really sank-in “til the following evening.
He’d had substance problems from his pre-teen years, living in North Philadelphia, one of the tough city neighborhoods. Through failure and break-up of a marriage, and mis-guided efforts (or lack thereof) of family, the kid ended being influenced by sad, bad (though not cruel) family circumstances, and peers. He worked with his great grandfather’s 100 + year old hand tools – an “artiste.” Everybody liked him, but he would be stoned, high, whacked, drunk — altered. He died a dog’s death at 27 years old. I keep a picture of him hanging in my work area to remind me to “do the right thing,” refuse to shut up about both alcohol, and the other drugs that own, then kill, many, and destroy families. And no where near all of them are ‘bad’ people.
Abusers of substances will abuse whatever substance is available. They also like cheap. This opiate emergency has brought the price of heroin down — way down, in a criminal price-war, in which one gang is “legitimate business,” the other the usual suspects. We’re becoming a nation of overweight, addicted, declining, reclining, procrastinators. We punish ourselves daily through ignorance and inaction.
Bad as I feel for them, I have some other things to, hopefully, arouse interest, maybe tell you about something you’ve missed. Or forgotten. That ‘d be good work.
An apology in praise of the Recon Marines
I apologize to John Gambee for forgetting some good soldiers our country has in one of my earlier posts. The Recon Marines do their job, keep their mouths shut, don’t get much press… because they dot want it. Coasties have a tie to Marines going way back to World War II, and the island-hopping war in the Pacific. Many a Coast Guardsman fell in those attacks, or in rescues of wounded jar-heads from hostile beaches out there. CG combat photographers captured most of the nitty-gritty of the Pacific campaigns. In 195G’s Kodiak, our crew favored their EM club. The Marines lived up to their long-held reputation, and surpassed it.
If you’ve been in combat, you’ve caused collateral damage. It’s pretty much a part of the work you can’t dodge — a regretfully accepted and necessary part of the work. As the Russians learned in WWII, civilian casualties are often several times higher than military (21 million civilian, seven million military, then and there). The gist of my short (I don’t employ a staff) article on giving ISIL a thrill (several weeks ago), was the necessity of getting some surprise, maybe some deceit, into our strategy, and put the enemy into the defensive and re-active mode we’ve too long occupied. At Fallujah, Iraq, our (idiot) Pentagon, political, and field commanders talked publicly (for weeks) prior to aft four attacks, about where they were going, what they were going to do, and when. Then they wondered at their casualties and fatalities (about 100 fatalities each visit), and why enemy big shots always escaped.
If you served In Vietnam, you likely weren’t too cautious about collateral damage, because much of it there was done purposely (and under top secret orders) — as at My Lai. The 48th anniversary of the notorious slaughter passed, unmentioned, last month. Five hundred six-seven (567) old men, women of all ages, and children (including babies), were murdered by soldiers of our Army.
The men who caused the slaughter, who ordered the slaughter, got away with it, clean. Not really a heroic action on the army’s part. Hard to believe American soldiers, out of control, murdered so many. (“Well, those soldiers had recently taken a large number of casualties,” the brass explained). In fact, they were led into the slaughter by their officers, one of whom fired first shots. All of them were out of control. Lt. Calley did some time in “house arrest,” two or three years maybe. The Army (military), at the time, was living a nightmare tie (the “light at the end of the tunnel”), propagated by its own commanding General(s). The My Lai slaughter was the biggest (recorded) killing of innocents in Vietnam, not the ‘only.’ Another part of our ‘history’ we’re creating a myth for {only 250 dead), or burying.
The killing at My Lai stopped only when an army warrant-officer helicopter pilot dropped his chopper between killers and victims, then warned the killers he’d “turn the craft’s machine-guns on the next man, or men, who fired.” It took over 40 years for the Army to decorate him.