The fact is that opium derivatives do the job. A number of years ago when Jackie Kennedy Onassis was dying of painful cancer, the papers reported that she received enough painkillers to die without suffering. Essentially because she was rich, famous and an American icon. One should not have to be that rich nor famous to be kept from suffering needlessly.
It is time to reexamine our national priorities. We really cannot afford to have foreign wars and this artificial war on medications and recreational drugs at the same time. The nation's resources, veracity and safety are compromised by using valuable resources to watch physicians, cause recreational drugs to be so expensive that people kill for them, castigate older, sick people for looking for alleviation of suffering. Further, this "war" is totally non-productive. Billions have been spent and nothing has been produced except fear, pain and death. It is time to fight terrorists, if fight we must, and stop fighting the medical profession and the people it tries to serve.
Article comments
1 - John Bill
Brilliantly written Alpha. Did you know that Opium was outlawed in the US based on the 3rd Hague Opium Conference? Alcohol required the 18Th amendment to ban it. Somehow though because opium, cocaine, and marijuana were outlawed for racist reasons they didn't. Prior to this treaty, medicine was considered a states issue. The Supreme Court ruled however that the interstate commerce clause prohibitions on federal power didn't apply. Thus the drug war was born.