Tragic story. These communities need help. But how to help them? They’re not only addicted to pharmacological pain-killers, they’re addicted to pain-killing pseudo-dignity peddled to them by the ideological pushers in the GOP. Ultimately, like the junkie towns they are, they’re going to have to hit rock bottom and decide that they want help and really want to participate in modern society and its economy. That’s going to be painful and difficult, but what other option do they have?
It ain’t just KY - read this two part series from West Virginia and be appalled:
Follow the pills and you’ll find the overdose deaths.
The trail of painkillers leads to West Virginia’s southern coalfields, to places like Kermit, population 392. There, out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million highly addictive — and potentially lethal — hydrocodone pills over two years to a single pharmacy in the Mingo County town.
Rural and poor, Mingo County has the fourth-highest prescription opioid death rate of any county in the United States.
The trail also weaves through Wyoming County, where shipments of OxyContin have doubled, and the county’s overdose death rate leads the nation. One mom-and-pop pharmacy in Oceana received 600 times as many oxycodone pills as the Rite Aid drugstore just eight blocks away.
In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers, a Sunday Gazette-Mail investigation found.
And all of this begs the question…how do manufacturers suddenly start shipping absolutely astounding volumes of these high strength drugs to remote pharmacies in WV and apparently NOBODY notices or cares. Oh they DO notice because the profits have to be astounding and that is why they don’t care.
In the meantime, here in PA, for example, many communities have equipped their emergency service workers with drug pens designed to reverse the effects of drug overdoses, but many also report they are having a hard time finding the money to keep up with the demand for the pens.
The other day two small children were taken from the custody of their parents after the parents both overdosed, with the mother falling over on top of one of the babies. In another instance a mother overdosed and died, and a few days later, authorities found her 15-month old baby dead in the house from dehydration and malnutrition. It’s a national disaster and it could be halted with real regulation of the production, but nobody seems to care.
Many warned when this new class of opioids were first introduced to the market that they could lead to a new level of addiction. They were ignored…they were clearly right, but they were ignored. All hail Big Pharma. About as powerful as the NRA and clearly just as deadly.
Vague and totally impossible promises from Lord Dampnut that he will restore the coal industry.
So what is being done to restore it? New rules allowing the return of mountain-top mining practices that have two deadly effects:
1- Pushing overburden down the side of the mountain, destroying water supplies and creating long-lasting acidification and destruction of habitat.
2- Continuing the steady decline of jobs since such mining requires far fewer workers. In 2012 employment in the industry stood at about 90,000. It will be down about 15,000 by the end of this year. At best, a government study finds, allowing the return of mountain-top mining will result in less than 600 new jobs.
No wonder people are looking for super pain killers. They’ll need even more when they finally wake up and discover that Trump’s promises are lies and they have again been fleeced. And in most of these states, they remain without viable and affordable health care to boot because their GOP rulers told them Obamacare was a communist plot. KY actually had Obamacare for a while but few in the state knew it because it was called KYnect. They wound up electing a new GOP governor who pledged to get rid of it.
Now I’m seeing ads on television for pills that address “opioid constipation”. It’s a never-ending racket…at least until the victims can’t afford prescription pills and have to switch to the really awful crap.
Maybe they can all move down to the border and get wall-building jobs.
I blame the unholy alliance between neoliberal economist and republicans. The economists supported any shift where it was theoretically possible that the winners could compensate the losers, and the republicans made sure that would never happen.
Willie Sutton was only half right. Follow the money, yes, but it’s not all stored in bank vaults.
Does Lush Rimbaugh live in any of those places?
Manchester is in the heart of Appalachia, in Southeastern Kentucky. It’s not close to an interstate, and far enough from the national forest that it doesn’t get a lot of recreational business. The thing is, this part of Kentucky, along with Southwestern Virginia, has been economically stressed forever, even before the Civil War, when they were mostly subsistence farmers. I refuse to tar an entire population, but it does seem like many want to stay in spite of the challenges of getting a job, and yet are not reconciled to the economic trade offs of not pursuing other options. It’s hard to evaluate politically, because many people who are especially impoverished don’t vote at all, or, often as not, fall within the subset of people who vote Democratic. But if they are pinning their hopes on Trump, from an intellectual standpoint, it’s probably much the same logic as playing the lottery. No other palatable plan in sight makes the high odds seem worth taking.
I really think this is where the grass roots has to get involved. Many of these towns have been dying slowly, of course there are some on the rebound, over decades due to the loss of the manufacturing and the cheap price of natural gas v coal. These people need help, they need people to listen, and they need Rep’s willing to work with the ACA to improve it, not repeal it.
I don’t think Manchester ever had any true manufacturing to speak of. Seriously, Appalachia is not synonymous with the rust belt. Some of the rust belt includes Appalachia – southeastern Ohio, far southwestern Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, but southeastern Kentucky is better known as coal country, which is a different kind of employment and a different kind of economy.
Trump: So Obama fucked up the nice white people and I have to clean the mess. Where are The Muslims when I need them?
It’s more than a little depressing to live in Christian Wrong America whether it’s rural, suburban or those small pockets of bigotry in big cities. The hypocrites know that they are living a lie.
It may momentarily ease their pain by blaming minorities and others who have nothing to do with the economic problems brought on by Republican supply side economics and corporate welfare. But the truth is always there in the morning. They just can’t give up their addiction and refuse to confront their real tormentors, the Republican Party, so they drown themselves in prejudice and drugs.
Doesn’t say much for the Far Right Pharisees or their GOP puppet masters. Can’t give up their greed, prejudices or Satan. So they reach out to fascism and Putin for their ultimate Fix, giving up on democracy entirely. What a pathetic way to approach life.
God never wanted any human being to feel this desperate. All you have to do is face your demons and there is help among those that believe in each other not con men.
Manufacturing no longer satisfies the greed of supply side economics. Robots make better workers and can think and analyze far better than your typical Trump supporter. If the rubes complain, get them addicted on cheap cocaine.
Not just Appalachia where unemployment is high. There’s plenty of this going on in Colorado including in metro area:: doctors running “pill mills,” patients “doctor-shopping,” etc. Enforcement is very spotty.
Side note: have you ever heard of the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame? Google it and take a look. The guys who bought Purdue Pharma (the Sackler Bros.) and “pushed” oxycodone/hydrocodone out to the public in the first place are enshrined there.
Take home message: It’s easier and cheaper to buy legal narcotics than illegal ones. Hooray for the war on drugs!
I find the doctor’s “The patient made me prescribe them these powerful opioids.” a little troubling. Has anyone looked to see if they have links to these new pharmacies?
And in the state of Washington, where Everett, Washington is suing the drug manufacturers.
Let me see if I’ve got this. Small, non-thriving town in Kentucky, with lots of older, poorer residents. The prescribe a lot of pain meds. The overdose rate is going way down and the abusers are NOT the prescription users. So vis-a-vis the prescription users, THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE A PROBLEM beyond people in pain getting relief.
I don’t know if you noticed, but in this story on TPM their overdose rate has fallen and is quite low.