I'm sorry, *when* did we make the switch from abacuses and stone tools to modern technology?

[ck4829]

Because you see, it's just kind of odd that authorities and corporate powers will know everything about your pregnancy, miscarriages, where you go, what sites you visit on the Internet, what products you are buying, etc. and sure, OK, but yet none of those same actors knew about...

Drug Distributors Shipped 20.8 Million Painkillers To West Virginia Town Of 3,000
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/30/581930051/drug-distributors-shipped-20-8-million-painkillers-to-west-virginia-town-of-3-00

Pharmacies face 1st trial over role in opioid crisis
So many prescription painkillers were dispensed in Lake County, Ohio, between 2012 and 2016 that the amount equaled 265 pills for every resident. Just to the south, the flood of prescription opioids during the same period equated to 400 pills for every resident of Trumbull County.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-02/pharmacies-face-1st-trial-over-role-in-opioid-crisis

4 Mohave County doctors prescribed 6 million opioid pills in 1 year
The four doctors, who were not identified, wrote prescriptions for nearly 6 million pills over a 12-month period. That's more than enough to medicate every resident of the northwest Arizona county four times a day, for a week.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2017/11/09/four-top-15-opioid-doctors-prescribed-14-million-opioid-pill-prescriptions-1-year/822802001/

Where was the geofencing then?

Where was the corporate surveillance then?

Where was the government knowing where you go and what you search for then?

Where were the pharmacists with their conscience clauses then?

I mean, did we invent writing in the past 12 months or something?

[lindysalsagal]

1. Absolutely correct question. Also, why use 21st century tech to enforse

Stone-age fairy tales? If you really believe you want to live by stone-age, or even medieval values, wtf are you doing with a TV, cell phone, and Facebook?

[MerryBlooms]

2. They were all making millions of dollars off poisoning

America. Easy to turn a blind eye when you're making that kind a money.

[Chainfire]

5. Exactly the same as the five billion dollar gun and ammo business.

[ck4829]

12. Good point!

[Karadeniz]

3. Excellent point !

[brewens]

4. I think I posted about that West Virginia town when it was reported. I had a liquor inspector

analogy for it.

I was in the beer business for 15 years and dealt with our state liquor inspector. They are state police in Idaho. If some bar owner found a buyer to buy booze out the back door to sell to kids and tried it, he wouldn't get away with much for very long. Probably not even a second month. Harry would have been all over their ass! Especially if it was sales that had to be over the guys capacity allowed. Not a chance of getting away with that.

I was locking up one evening when a state trooper pulled up and told me Harry had been trying to call and needed to talk to someone right now! I called out assistant manager and he handled it. A high school kegger had been busted and Harry needed to see the paperwork for all the kegs we had sold to walk-in customers recently. He needed to find who bought six kegs I believe. Distributors are issued labels for those sales which have to be placed on each keg, but they were removed. He found the matching sale and the dude that bought the kegs was busted.

People were bought off on the opioids. They were just allowing that shit to be distributed and looked the other way.

[ck4829]

6. Good analogy, very apt

[Warpy]

14. The DEA visits pharmacies in most states

and keeps a database to make sure people aren't doctor shopping and getting multiple scrips from multiple pharmacies. They also look at how much each doctor is prescribing and they lean very heavily on both pharmacies and doctors.

You bet your ass they were bought off in WV. You can also bet those pills were being run all over the eastern half of the country.

The DEA and cops will circle the wagons and protect their own, as usual. Bought off investigators and cops will never see prison.

The pill mills got shut down in Florida and moved to WV. You can bet they are up and running elsewhere.

[Ilsa]

7. Spot. On.

It's so much more fun to make women miserable, impoverished, and desperate than to stop the enrichment of big pharma and the sorrow of funerals.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

8. I'm curious whether these counts of pills are standardized

213,000 (pop of Mohave County)/6,000,000 = 28.169. Matches almost exactly with 4 pills/day * 1 week.

However, looking at two ends of the spectrum, a Tylenol 3 is about 1/30th the strength of an oxycontin 80mg. 6 million Tylenol 3 is WAAAAAAY different than 6M 80mg Oxy's.

Thus ... I would hope that these counts are standardized to something like 5mg/Hydrocodone instant-release equivalent or similar because raw pill counts can be highly misleading.

So assuming that's the case ... I'll take my chronic-pain suffering dad as an example. He used to be Rx'd 240mg/day of oxycontin/oxycodone for his severe chronic pain. That's about equi-analgesic to 64*5mg Hydrocodone per day (as oxycodone is about 1/3 stronger than hydrocodone).

Per year, that's 23,360 (standardized to 5mg vicodin) pills.

So divide that into the 6M in 1 year in Mohave ... and that's the supply for about 257 'my dads' for one year.

Put another way, 213,000/257 (pop of Mojave County/my dads) = 1 in every 829 residents in the county being treated for 1 year for chronic pain at the level my dad was.

Doesn't seem quite as unreasonable when you look at it like that, does it?

Of course this calc relies on standardization, which I would assume the author did, because you REALLY should if you want to be taken seriously when presenting stats like this.

I'd also mention these 'offending' doctors are almost certainly the operators of pain management clinics, which is the preferred method of opioid distribution for instances of chronic pain. And there's often only 1 such clinic for MANY MANY MILES, so doing math centered around the population of the single town where the clinic gets it's mail ... can also be highly misleading.

It's logical IOW that a certain small handful of doctors, those running pain clinics, are going to be responsible for the lion's share of Rx's of opioids because the 'system' has been set up this way.

I only bring this up because your average journalist is only trying to tell a particular titillating story, but may not really have the appropriate medical & statistical knowledge to do it proper justice.

If I wanted to tell it from the opposite angle, showing how this is a reasonable number of pills, and that these doctors may have been honestly serving their community ... I could do so as well, and just did.

[Elessar Zappa]

11. I think the war on opiates has gone too far.

My dad has severe chronic pain and takes 3 10mg hydrocodone pills a day. He’s had to switch doctors a few times because they became scared of the DEA on their back. My dad never abuses it and has used the same dose for ten years. My great aunt flat out deals with chronic pain because her doctors are scared of opiates. She does take marijuana gummies which help somewhat with her pain.

[Voltaire2]

9. The era of digital fascism is different.

It makes a Stasi State appear only mildly intrusive.
From left authoritarianism states like China to right theocratic fascist states like Iran or very likely the USA, this is not your grandpa’s police state. It is a whole other thing.

[ck4829]

10. Sounds like someone getting their jollies plays a role

Auditing, record keeping, accountability... yawn. Boring!

Oppression and punching down... YES! THAT! THAT! HARDER! GO!

[Hekate]

13. KnR

[AndyS]

15. I subscribe to the Department of Justice Press Release service.

https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOJ/subscriber/new

You would be surprised at the number of cases successfully prosecuted by them. Since Joe B took office and they reinstated the civil rights division they've been busy there as well as dealing with the Opioid criminals at all levels, recovering PPP funds stolen, prosecuting foreign (and domestic) agents and now the J6 mess.

They do not release info on cases not closed--they're kinda quiet until there's a sentence. I've seen a lot of opioid convictions, civil rights (particularly in prison guards vs inmates and police), recovery of federal funds (one case recovered enough tax money to cover the entire DOJ budget for the year) and environmental cases.

They're busy. Very busy. And now we know that the past Administration is being investigated.