Why is the President commuting sentences of cocaine traffickers?

[Warren DeMontague]

258. Yeah, there is a whole ton of complexity to the conversation that just doesn't get covered by

the knee-jerk rhetoric. The fact that all "drugs" are not the same (both legal and illegal). The unintended consequences to various enforcement actions and the connections between certain use patterns and other social or economic factors.

Take the concurrent conversations about "the prescription drug crisis" and "the heroin crisis". Only occassionally will someone acknowledge that the two are related, and in fact that it has been stricter "tightening" of rules around prescription opiods which has driven some people with pain, as well as some addicts, to the black market.

Just the other day I read some apologia piece talking about how "well, doctors are just going to have to tell people to accept pain"- fucking GREAT. As someone who has had oral surgery and benefited a fuckton from the targeted brief use of pain medication, it's just lovely to think that next time (heaven forbid) i will be told to meditate or try yoga instead.

And yeah, who didn't see that coming? All the rhetoric about "ZO NO, people getting high off prescription meds" and yes, invariably when you "crack down" on the "problem" you are also going to move in the direction of forcing people to suffer. But it's okay, because you're stopping some other people from catching an unauthorized buzz. Squee!

To be sure, there are overdose problems with prescription meds as well- but another aspect to that, which is not often discussed; how much of the medical fallout from, say, vicodin abuse is due not to the opiod component, but due to the fact that it is bound up with acetaminophen, which is liver toxic and incredibly easy to OD on, despite being available over the counter?

On the topic of the "meth epidemic", as you mention- a couple things I consider relevant there, one being that meth is a problem often in places where the so-called WOD has worked especially well in eliminating other mind-alterants, also the socioeconomic component which is that meth is a logical outgrowth of an economic environment where you have people forced to work two, three minimum wage shit jobs with no benefits, to get by. The dude who pulls 8 hours at Wal-Mart and then does the night shift at the AM/PM? How else is he gonna manage? And meth helps him get through, for a little while, until his teeth fall out and he develops symptoms of psychosis, etc.