Going to Sleep
May 27, 2020 22:28:47 GMT -5
Post by dmdr on May 27, 2020 22:28:47 GMT -5
Absolutely nobody needs those types of substances as amply demonstrated that billions of people have lived and died without ever having heard of them. They may improve the quality of life for a small handful of individuals but the destruction wrought by the increased availability, and you know perfectly well that they are far more easily available now (again, see the links above re: poppy production in Afghanistan), of opioids more than offsets that. Sort of like how the availability of crack cocaine presaged that crisis. I understand where you got this from as I took a look at the numbers here and I can't help but notice a correlation with the decline in opioid prescriptions and the ODs linked to heroin etc. I mentioned above, but you'll also note that prescriptions were rising very quickly prior to 2013.
You may not remember this but prior to the crisis there was a lot of talk about how addiction is a product of shitty lifestyles rather than a mostly physiological thing. That study about bored rats slamming the drug lever came up quite often, and oh isn't it awful these people are being forced to live in pain when we could just give them a pill. Doctors were encouraged to prescribe the fucking things! And of course, concurrently, free trade agreements and offshoring jobs were coming into vogue then too.
Your point about productivity is absurd btw. The communities most affected by the opioid thing are most typically depressed economically; these people aren't WWII fighter pilots flying dozens of missions per week, they're peons who didn't quite live up to all the turn-of-the-century bullshit about the information economy. I also wonder why there's such a push now for weed legalisation, because let's be honest here stoners are the most unproductive people on the planet. And yet we want to make more of them? It makes no sense if this is about generating economic units. It's the same logic as the old opioid propaganda too: a very small minority will benefit, so let's make it widely available to everyone! (No there won't be any bad effects cross our hearts and hope to die).
Of course, the docility of addicts is well attested. Aldous Huxley wrote a whole book about it. A good real world example, since examples drawn from fiction are obviously dumb, is the Opium War in China in the 19th century. NOW, the usual line with that is that the motivation of the British was to create a nation of addicts!!!! which is obviously retarded, the Poms didn't give a shit what the Chinese did with the stuff (any more than the Chinese gave a shit what you Yanks do with all the Fentanyl they sold you until not too long ago) as long as they didn't have to pay for their tea with silver, and the Chinese wanted to on-shore production, not ban it, but never-the-less drugs=captive population. And that's why I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist, thanks for reading.
You may not remember this but prior to the crisis there was a lot of talk about how addiction is a product of shitty lifestyles rather than a mostly physiological thing. That study about bored rats slamming the drug lever came up quite often, and oh isn't it awful these people are being forced to live in pain when we could just give them a pill. Doctors were encouraged to prescribe the fucking things! And of course, concurrently, free trade agreements and offshoring jobs were coming into vogue then too.
Your point about productivity is absurd btw. The communities most affected by the opioid thing are most typically depressed economically; these people aren't WWII fighter pilots flying dozens of missions per week, they're peons who didn't quite live up to all the turn-of-the-century bullshit about the information economy. I also wonder why there's such a push now for weed legalisation, because let's be honest here stoners are the most unproductive people on the planet. And yet we want to make more of them? It makes no sense if this is about generating economic units. It's the same logic as the old opioid propaganda too: a very small minority will benefit, so let's make it widely available to everyone! (No there won't be any bad effects cross our hearts and hope to die).
Of course, the docility of addicts is well attested. Aldous Huxley wrote a whole book about it. A good real world example, since examples drawn from fiction are obviously dumb, is the Opium War in China in the 19th century. NOW, the usual line with that is that the motivation of the British was to create a nation of addicts!!!! which is obviously retarded, the Poms didn't give a shit what the Chinese did with the stuff (any more than the Chinese gave a shit what you Yanks do with all the Fentanyl they sold you until not too long ago) as long as they didn't have to pay for their tea with silver, and the Chinese wanted to on-shore production, not ban it, but never-the-less drugs=captive population. And that's why I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist, thanks for reading.