New Ideas, New Leaders Needed in West Virginia
It is interesting to note how doctors tell a patient “No tobacco at all.” Recovering alcoholics cannot even have a glass of wine, a beer or sip of Jack or Jim. However, concerning the opioid crisis in Appalachia, the medical geniuses are saying with their “innovative” strategy of the clean needle exchange program: Keep using, but you can do it in a safer environment. It is perpetuating the addiction, not getting people sober.
Please explain how continuing to use a drug is the same concept as abstinence. The same gaggle of scientists tell us don’t smoke (and second-hand smoke is equally as harmful), but it’s safe for frack flaring particles to blow into your house. This needle idea is just a rehash of the New York City idea from 20 some years ago. Why have there been continuous West Virginia town hall meetings to address the meteoric rise in addicts even after this idea was implemented? The president even addressed the issue in Charleston. Why are the local print and television media leading with continued ODs, drug arrests and sordid behaviors stemming from drug use/trade? On many days, one can find multiple drug related stories as well as op-ed pieces.
If this is such an effective strategy, why were there 26 ODs in Huntington in just a four-hour period on Aug. 15?
The public health officials who believe “Reefer Madness” is a solution to addiction are really out of touch. The clean needle program has proven to be a real hollow way to deal with the crisis. Moreover, the anti-OD injection, Narcan, shows how dependent many physicians are on the pharmaceutical industry for answers, when it was doctors pushing pharm products that hooked patients on opioids in the first place.
You nearly get injured when the nurses rush to get handouts from the pharm representatives. There goes another copay. What, if any, incentives are there for docs to write so many scripts? If there have been negotiated incentives, that info should be public. It would be like putting corporate logos on NASCAR cars.
Why does America spend obscene amounts on health care, yet we are one of the sickest countries? With the ineffectiveness of the flu nasal vaccines, dismal performance of chemo and lots of other Western treatments coupled with the outdated ideas of combating the opioid situation, it is long past time to look for new solutions and leaders.
Many have taken the pro fracking side, but not observing from our neighborhood, and overlooking the Porter Ranch case, is enough to show that some officials have demonstrated very little concern for the people they supposedly represent.
So why is remodeling going to be done for the swanky lofts for the people who are not moving to the area? Why is there such a lack of hope in the valley, West Virginia and Appalachia? We can hold the AA sobriety coins with an invocation to God, but we can’t mention His name in public. Not counting the stagnation in school test scores associated with Common Core, West Virginia can’t keep its best students.
What happened to the frack salvation? Where are all of the jobs, jobs, jobs from the GreenHunter recycling plant and barging frack waste? How lucrative are those CHK dividends? We need to awaken from the illusion that the century-long coal industry is still ebullient. We’re winning the race to the bottom. Congratulations!!! For over 40 years, we’ve been losing generations of bright students to Columbus and the South.
Eighty years of a one-party monopoly on politics aided to the decline. Recent Republican ideology of cozying up to the frackers has been a bust. Corporate solutions, vaccines, clean needles, fossil fuels aren’t working. Frack gas can be manipulated to control supply and price.
Why isn’t the supply of opioids being manipulated to make it scarce? In our capitalistic society, I thought everything was based on supply and demand.
We can reduce the demand by high school English teachers demonstrating how opium derailed Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s brilliant poetic beginnings (“Dejection: An Ode” and “Epitaph”). Perhaps, people who have achieved sobriety could teach the health classes on addiction. Maybe Western cultural imperialism needs to be scraped, and Eastern medicine needs to be incorporated.
We ignore our own WVU engineering students’ research into the effectiveness of solar panels. There’s an idea politicians don’t discuss when discussing jobs, jobs, jobs. Get our priorities straight. Ban God in schools, but it seems a little late when convicts can freely discuss Him in prison.
Why not have scholarly bus tours of the valley to showcase the region’s rich prehistoric past? While we were waiting for an announcement of the cracker, “Ancient Aliens” already did an excellent segment on giants in the Kanawha Valley.
Stop financially rewarding doctors for screwing up. “No copay for you,” says the Copay Nazi. Maybe doctors shouldn’t get paid until you’re cured. Most doctors should respond when a family member calls about the erratic behavior stemming from their scripts. Make doctors take substance abuse classes. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Mark Eddy is an Ohio County resident.
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