Opium, Hypocrisy, and Amnesia
Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
This much-abused quote is frequently tweaked to say “ignore” or “forget” history. Sometimes people simply choose to ignore it, particularly when there are profits to be made. So it is with the opioid industry, legal and illegal.
We are in the midst of an opioid epidemic that threatens to destroy a generation. The Center for Disease Control’s most recently published numbers are that 91 people a day are dying of opioid abuse of one form or another. One suspects the current number to be higher. One friend told me her son had lost ten friends to opioids. TEN! A recent article in The Guardian describes a ten-year high school reunion in which fully half the class was missing—dead from pills or heroin. It is now the leading cause of death for young people, beating out automobile accidents.
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