Working While Poor and In Pain in the United States

[Warpy]

10. Thank you for this

Before the Harrison Act of 1914, opium compounds, usually in the form of laudanum, were over the counter in most drug stores. State and city laws covered the sale and it was basically legal. There was social pressure against the overuse of laudanum, especially, probably more for the alcohol than the opium.

After the Harrison Act, doctors who rarely saw patients in chronic pain were inundated since these people suddenly had no means to manage their own pain. Few of these people were addicts. Most were physically dependent on the drug because of pain.

People in those days worked 14-16 hour days in mills, in mines, and on farms. They were able to keep going because they had adequate treatment for their not inconsiderable pain. Our forebears were not Supermen. They just had appropriate, self regulated treatment.

This is what I want to go back to. People should have the ability and the right to manage their own pain. The search for non opiate painkillers has turned up a lot of drugs later found to have deadly side effects, none suitable for daily use for chronic pain sufferers for years at a time. It's time to throw in the towel, admit the drug war has been a dismal failure for addicts and the general population together, leading only to tyranny with too many people left miserably in pain until they commit suicide to make it stop.

What we are doing now is cruel, wasteful, expensive, and does not work. Prohibition will never work.