Prescription Drug Propaganda

Prescription Drug Propaganda - Conflating Opioid Therapy with Addiction; Alex DeLuca; War on Doctors/Pain Crisis blog of the Pain Relief Network; 2007-08-15. Revised: 2008-10-11.

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Every once in a while it is important to fully immerse oneself in the madness, to read every sentence of a simplistic, boring, rewrite of a hateful passion play a century old, almost entirely lies. It is dirty, time-consuming work, but it is also grounding as in, ‘this is the Big Lie - if not specifically challenged it gains in strength.’

So let’s get to work. Our subject of analysis today is, ‘Here to Help’ - Heroin Addicts Grateful for Local Clinic by S.E. Lindt of the Lancaster PA Intelligencer Journal, 2007-08-14. This story can be seen as, and presents itself as, a personal tale of getting help, substitution therapy, decent clinics, good docs, of being a patient instead of a criminal. And all of these are personal, medical, or societal goods, no argument; and all are touched upon in one way or another in the article.

What is wrong with the article is that the bulk of it is classic ‘purple prose’ about the thrills and thrall of opioid use and withdrawal - soft junkie porn for the masses. It is propaganda demonizing opioid analgesics as inherently ‘addicting’, which under the Controlled Substances Act means, literally, ‘criminalizing.’ This is necessary to gain passive public acceptance of the federal targeting of pain doctors as drug dealers, and of pain patients as addicts temporarily protected from their just deserts by said venal docs.

The chart ¹ (click to enlarge) is included for perspective - “PharmCo” refers to adverse drug reactions to all prescribed meds, for example, hospital med dispensing errors. Illegal drug use includes “non-medical” prescription drug use. Note cannabis deaths = zero.

This paragraph has pretty much all of the elements that bug me about the article.

“Hartley soon found himself “doctor shopping” and visiting local ERs to maintain a 60-pill-a-day addiction to this popular opioid. The little pills pack a whopping high when misused — that is, crushed and snorted or injected into a vein. A lesser-known fact about this and other opioids is that they hook users for life by changing their brain chemistry.”

“The little pills pack a whopping high… crushed and snorted or injected…” - there’s your soft porn, along with all those tales of tears for missed kids birthdays, and having a hard time hitching a ride to the clinic (oh the humanity!) that pepper this article.

But it is the last sentence, above, and the spirit of that sentence relentlessly pounded home, that is very damaging for pain patients.

“A lesser-known fact about this and other opioids is that they hook users for life by changing their brain chemistry.”
Outrageous. Pure dis-information. Opioid therapy, titrated to analgesic effect, is empowering to pain patients - when successful, they pick up their beds and walk, that is, they have a life, and it is a beautiful thing to see.

Your government wants very much that you believe that opioids magically criminalize people, that daily use of opioid medications is enslaving and harmful. All lies. Without pain patients as fodder, the war on drugs falters, federal law enforcement and the substance abuse treatment industry start missing meals and getting nervous - there just aren’t enough illicit drug users to maintain the bloat.

This article under consideration could be disregarded as simply stupid and hateful to drug users or “addicts”, which would be par and hardly notable, except they start this whole soap opera off with a story of legitimate pain! Here is how the article begins:

“[A]fter a 5,000-pound machine fell on his back in a workplace accident, street heroin became [Shannon Hartley's] eventual drug of choice. Of course, it didn’t start that way… After his injury, he was prescribed OxyContin for pain. Hartley said his physician was liberal with refills and knowingly fed his growing addiction…”

So what is the message? Well one clear message to me is that the line between pain patient and “addict” - that pitiable dregs of humanity; the walking dead; that criminal scourge; is thin and vague. In fact it is presented as the slippery slope if not an inevitability - people on chronic opioid therapy are, or will become, addicts. Pain patient, drug addict, who cares? Drug are bad, people who use them are bad, you and I are better than that; they deserve what they get.

And who are they? What is an ‘addict’? Near the middle of the article, after stating that methadone maintenance “changed Hartley’s life [for the better],” the author informs us, in authoritative tones:

But the thing about methadone is, an addict still needs a dose every single day. Without methadone, he will still go through physical and mental withdrawal - or go back to a street dealer to get an illegal high.

And there it is: “addicts” are people who take opioids daily; period. This grossly misleading disinformation is not ok for pain patients, and not ok for drug users, and may describe our baser selves, but is otherwise to be taken as federal government propaganda, IMO.

See - it’s all about the drugs, not the people. It is the drug that did all this to the man in this article, Mr. Hartely. This tale is always told in the passive sense. And that is not what drug use is like or about in the vast majority of cases, as we all know either from medical treatment, or other drug use, or drinking or knowing someone well who did some or all of these. Or from reading Jacob Sullum’s, “Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.” People use drugs purposefully - for a reason. It is a decision.

In any event, pain is by far the larger societal problem, by any standard. Ass backwards like a lot of drug war phenomena - they get it exactly wrong. So exactly wrong it just feels on purpose.

And it is not just that paragraph - it is the thrust of the piece. The enlightened harm reduction’esque info and a smattering of correct sentences from doctors come only in the closing paragraphs of a very long article. And they do not alter the essentially propagandist nature of journalism like this.

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