So what is the cause of the heroin epidemic? Have you connected the dots?
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the 2016 Postmortem forum).
1. They signed disastrous trade agreements which sucked jobs out of this country (and they didn't plan WHATSOEVER for what the people who lost their jobs would do because they did not give a damn).
2. They import foreign workers to take American Jobs.
3. College has become a pipe dream for many. For others they are saddled with a lifetime of debt and no job security. (See #2)
4. We have a militarized police force that is terrorizing and killing people.
5. We have put people in jail for non violent crimes providing cheap slave labor for the corporations, enriching for profit prisons, and destroying families. Have you ever thought of what happens to the children of those families?
6. People are living in 3rd world housing and sending their kids to mold and rodent infested schools.
7. Our infrastructure and water systems are crumbling and we have talked about fixing it for decades. Instead of fixing it the cost to fix it goes ever higher and our national debt has skyrocketed. And what do we have to show for it? Well, the 1% has become even wealthier feeding at the public trough and benefiting from policies that enrich them at the expense of the masses. And our politicians become rich by letting the 1% do this. And not only do our politicians have no shame, they make jokes about it.
8. They passed a health INSURANCE act that created a mandatory customer base for the insurance companies. The cost of insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays has skyrocketed. And will ALL the money spent we still don't have health care for all. We pay more than any other country for lesser quality healthcare!
9. People have lost their homes because they were preyed upon by the devoid of conscience financial crooks (and the limousine progressives of Hollywood put out a movie that depict sub-prime borrowers as strippers with multiple homes and people buying homes in their dogs names).
10. They have created a lot of addicts by pushing the damn pain killers like they are candy. But hey, big Pharma and its investors need to make their money.
11. We act like Wall Street is the only economy to worry about. Wall Street is nothing more than legalized gambling.
= new reply since forum marked as read
he didn't fix everything while he was in Congress and his campaign hasn't resulted in medicare for all already. what a chump. 
Hillary receives no mention.
Guilty conscience? 
https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/testimony-to-congress/2016/americas-addiction-to-opioids-heroin-prescription-drug-abuse
There are certain physicians in my area who are known as "pill doctors" who dispense these prescriptions freely. They usually call themselves pain clinics. Some are connected to established medical organizations, but others are not as ethical.
They hand the stuff out like candy around here.
I'm going to threaten a lawsuit against the next one who hands me a prescription for one of these pain killers without even saying a word about the potential for addiction.
I took 1! Vicodin pill and besides feeling like I was going to vomit, I also felt a severe addictive crash after it wore off. Assuming that I just needed to 'get used' to it, I took a second one. All it did was stop the depressive crash that happened after the 1st one wore off. Vile! I was addicted after one pill!! Are you fucking kidding me? I'll fucking hurt a doctor who tries to get me and hundreds of others addicted to pain killers. We've had a record number of deaths from opiates around here - it was even mentioned during the campaign. I blame the doctors since they are the one and only gateway to the original addiction.
As the maps show, it's not just that overdose deaths rose as a result of the opioid crisis; these deaths also spread to all parts of the country. The deaths are, truly, an epidemic.
How did this happen? In short, doctors resorted to opioid painkillers to help Americans deal with pain — a serious medical issue, given that chronic pain alone afflicts about 100 million Americans. But these drugs are very addictive and dangerous, so millions of people got hooked on the drugs, and tens of thousands died.
So why did doctors turn to opioids? One big reason was a concerted campaign by pharmaceutical companies that characterized these drugs as largely safe and effective — claims so misleading that Purdue Pharma, producer of OxyContin, and some of its executives would later pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/9/11392856/opioid-heroin-epidemic-map
I don't let politics make me angry, but this topic infuriates me.
