2020 wasn’t a good year for anyone but the companies operating during the pandemic. And this is now reflected in the massive increase in opioid use throughout the US. What was already a huge problem, is now skyrocketing out of control, thanks, in part to quarantine. Is cannabis the answer to this growing opioid epidemic?
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Where were we before this year?
Prior to 2020, and the start of corona and forced quarantine measures, there was already an opioid issue in the US, and not a small one. Different sources have different numbers, but despite discrepancies, the one clear fact, is that this is a massive problem. For example, whether you go with hhs.gov, which puts overdoses in 2019 at close to 71,000, or drugabuse.gov, which puts it at 50,000, a lot of Americans died that year because of these drugs. Since hhs.gov gives more statistics, we’ll use this site to get an idea of what we’re dealing with numbers-wise. In the year 2019, these things happened:
Opioid overdoses – 70,630
People who used heroin – 745,000
People who used heroin for the first time – 50,000
Heroin-related overdoses – 14,480
Misuse of prescription painkillers for 1st time – 1.6 million
Furthermore, the idea that the term ‘misuse’ is used in the case of prescription drugs, with such large numbers attached, goes to show that the powers that be, want to put the onus of this, on the drug users themselves. This, despite that fact that the numbers show it can’t be expected that people will be able to use such drugs correctly. Probably because of their incredibly strong addictive properties. It is not for patients to determine if a drug is safe for how its prescribed. That’s for doctors. The information above shows that trained medical professionals often do not ask the right questions, do not understand what they’re working with, and do not know how to find information for themselves.
What happened in 2020?
2020 really wasn’t a good year for most people. A lot of jobs were lost, a lot of plans broken, a lot of life, completely stalled. And this involved forced quarantines whereby the population was made to stay at home, even as paychecks ran out, and the ability to put food on the table was diminished. People eschewed seeing friends and family, and even getting basic exercise, at the behest of the government.
While this is still a touchy subject for many, I would be remiss if I did not point out, that many of the same pharmaceutical companies profiting off the opioid epidemic, are the same ones pushing people to get corona vaccines. And the same doctors who could not think for themselves, and prescribed those opiates, are the same ones telling people they should get vaccinated. If ever there was a time to question something in life, this is that time.
But this article isn’t about corona vaccines, and that’s a different subject. For our current purposes, we want to see how the events of the past year affected opioid use. And the answer isn’t a pretty one. According to Marketwatch, and preliminary data from the CDC, opioid overdoses went up a full 30% in 2020, fueled mainly by stress and isolation. Whereas there is a discrepancy for numbers for 2019 – 50,000 and 70,000, the number for 2020, is 93,331, well above either estimate for 2019. This is the sharpest increase in three decades.
The main culprit? Not heroin, but fentanyl. One of the pharmaceutical versions to make it big. Fentanyl was already on the rise starting in 2019 – once again, probably because it’s a highly addictive drug that got prescribed by doctors not able to think for themselves – and picked up speed in March 2020 when lockdowns started. Not only is this an example of doctors unable to do their jobs properly, but of pharmaceutical greed, and the idea of ancillary damage. These deaths were not caused by the corona virus, but the reaction to it. These deaths can be put with those that will come from the increase in poverty, and lack of government resources.