Forums › Drugs › Legal & Herbal Highs › Kratom users holding their breath as DEA decides the drug’s fate
TBH as flawed as many of the laws are in Asian countries, none of them (not even the Phillipines!) has the same level of hypocrisy whereby supposedly independent medical professionals such as doctors are actively incentivised to take part in a ruthless “free market takes all” prescribing system where commercial branded medications produced by US companies appear to be heavily prioritised over any kind of generic.
I notice this whenever anyone from USA posts about pharms; they nearly always use the commercial brand name rather than the chemical name.
Yet at my work it is very rare to see a proprietary name on anyones records; its always the “Euroname” for any generic meds.
if any doctor elsewhere in the world prescribed like those in USA they would likely be arrested and struck off for loose prescription and facilitating diversion.
Lots of American doctors are loose with things that are pretty hard drugs such as benzos and stimulants; you only need to half ass present the symptoms that the drug is purported to treat to receive and prescription. Additionally they’ll up your dosage overtime which often makes diverting them even easier cause you have more than you could use by yourself. As far as it goes there are some doctors who aren’t like that at all, in my experience those are older doctors who may have done some drugs themselves in the 60’s or 70’s or saw some of the problems caused by drugs that no longer really exist such as quaaludes and barbiturates.
to be fair there did seem to be a variation by state, with the liberal states in particularl and/or areas which I know to have serious drugs problems from news reports moving more towards “European” healthcare. One thing we used to see a lot of on here was addicts whose supplies had been restricted by their doctors desparately trying to purchase on line.
Barbiturates still exist but are very rarely indicated for anything (other than some very specialised conditions and both veterinary and human euthanasia), although there has been a recent trend of them reappearing on the black market and even used by people in low income areas “bored” with everything else and also hoarded by seniors with serious age related illnesses who do not want to spend their last days in residential homes and/or in countries where human euthanasia in forbidden.
Most European pharm companies increasingly do not like to sell human grade preparations of barbituares to the USA in quantity due to their use in death penalty (this may well be against EU human rights rules).
On a related note, the barbiturates for animal euthanasia known as are often deep blue in solution (since ancient times the colour blue has been associated with poison).
One of the worst blunders of the UK / European RC market was when mephedrone and cathinones started being indentifed and restricted even before the ban was the exact same blue dye was at one point was being added to the cathinones to clear them through Customs (presumably so any bulk scan might just identify them as vet drugs).
Clearly this was a very risky method to use..
I’m not sure how or when the American overprescription epidemic started but almost anyone can get Amphetamines or Benzodiazepines if they want them. Some of it seems to be that people want to take a medication to feel better so doctors oblige and prescribe. On the other hand pharmaceutical representatives do a great job of marketing these drugs to doctors who them prescribe them excessively in some cases.
It is quite possible that all the children and young adults have ADD/ADHD because of television and shit, so while marijuana is a good treatment it gets passed over for Amphetamines which are a logical choice for the condition despite the risks.
As far as benzos go, many people have anxiety conditions or are irritable and these meds help them function. There are people gaming the system with these and amphetamines but its not like they’re not used legitimately and without diversion for many people.
Opiates once seemed to be the most diverted drug at one point, although there has been a huge crackdown, patients often have to sign pain management contracts which involve drug tests as an out of pocket expense by the patient even if they’re on them for legit uses and have been for a long time and aren’t even taking a high value opiate. An 80mg oxycontin costs up to $80, if you have a full script of those that is a lot of cash even if you don’t sell them all. Benzo’s are like $1-2 for 1mg xanax and adderall is $2 or $3 for a 10mg tablet or capsule. Hard to get rich $1 at a time, pretty easy with a bottle full of 80mg oxycontins. This isn’t the doctor’s fault directly, but unwittingly they helped create the current opiate epidemic.
Most doctors are reasonable and don’t prescribe it unless they think it is helpful and necessary but there will always be a few bad actors and everyone gets word that these doctors can help you out and they become swamped with patients and essentially become pill mills.
Look up ‘Doc Hollywood’ from California, the guy went to prison and he was prescribing multiple more of xanax and adderall than the 2nd place doctor in California.
@Shakyamuni 986394 wrote:
I’m not sure how or when the American overprescription epidemic started but almost anyone can get Amphetamines or Benzodiazepines if they want them. Some of it seems to be that people want to take a medication to feel better so doctors oblige and prescribe. On the other hand pharmaceutical representatives do a great job of marketing these drugs to doctors who them prescribe them excessively in some cases.[/quote]
This still happens in Europe but to a lesser extent and there are more people who will speak out against this. I know its been restricted loads in UK as on top of the prescribed drugs there are lots of medical supplies required by seniors where the nurses and management can decide for themselves what to get out of a number of brands; but we don’t get all the giveaways like office supplies that previously used to be always sent by sales reps.
Quote:It is quite possible that all the children and young adults have ADD/ADHD because of television and shit, so while marijuana is a good treatment it gets passed over for Amphetamines which are a logical choice for the condition despite the risks.just a few days ago I was reading an article on a Dutch criminology website where the reporter alleges (with some truth, as I can also read real time crime news in Dutch) the only reason youth crime isn’t through the roof is because of the use of ADHD meds. Although what happens in many EU countries and UK is the treatment is tapered off just when the young adults might actually still need it; its hardly surprising many get back into stims via party drugs and then get drawn into the wider street drugs culture.
Quote:As far as benzos go, many people have anxiety conditions or are irritable and these meds help them function. There are people gaming the system with these and amphetamines but its not like they’re not used legitimately and without diversion for many people.
This is true, but the European approach has been to try and make the quality of life better so people don’t have to work long hours/live in unsafe environments and thus require these drugs. This did work up until the event of globalism/neoliberalism and the Internet pushing everywhere towards a US “winner takes all” culture…
Opiates are available here but to get the stronger ones usually requires admission to a residential home – its to some extent “luck of the draw” and dependent on how much a family can also contribute (NHS only pay some of the care costs) what kind of institution the patient ends up in, so its easy for comparatively young folk to end up in places more suited to 80-100+ age group.
It seems to boil down to universal health care or a lack therefore of.
If you’re paying out of pocket or paying a hefty insurance premium there is some sort of feeling that you better be getting happy pills out of the deal.
This is true, although most European healthcare providers get a mixture of public and private funding (NL has a complex system of health insurance with an excess charge which can cause more issues than the way things are done with the UK NHS!)
What is different to the USA is there usually is a central regulator in each country who decides what treatment régimes should be followed by doctors/prescribers and oversees that pharm companies and everyone else involved complies.
It is not totally impossible to get exceptions to rules, for instance in England/Wales adult ADHD treatment with stims is classed as “unlicensed”.
What that means is not that its forbidden per se; but the GP has to get the license to prescribe it via the regional NHS management and of course the amounts prescribed are closely watched.
It would equally be misconduct for the GP to deny a patient treatment because s/he didn’t want to do the extra paperwork as loose prescription would be. Even so GPs can still claim time/work pressures or security issues to justify other treatments against ADHD, which leads to the wider use of SSRI type antidepressants than in the USA which creates problems of their own.
There is a case for legal tolerance of stimulant use or less control (after all stims were near enough available OTC until 1970s and more recently through mail order for NPS varieties) but the health services understandably don’t want to be picking up the burden of excessive use especially when its occuring for people trying to cope with unrealistic work demands and/or mere hedonism at weekends (although that could be addressed to some extent by similar “sin taxes” to alcohol)
A sin tax would be great but due to the benefits of amphetamines I think everyone would pay it.
Fuck SSRI’s for anything.
I don’t think the American health care system is totally to blame, a lot of it is just American culture in general. Also the copay for filling a prescription for benzo’s or adderall is cheaper than buying an eighth of marijuana or a gram of cocaine AND they are legal!
Many US hospitals and pharmacies use exactly the same prescribing software as my region of the UK – the pharmacy even uses 3 ring binders which are not just unusual in UK but these ones have the ring bit along the top side of the paper rather than the long bit.
We have to add our own locally generated printed forms from the patient database to these binders, I had to buy an adjustable hole punch specially from USA to deal with this as the one issued in the early 90s had finally given up the ghost (cost near $20 and came from some obscure small stationery store in a town I had never heard of – to be fair it was at least made of good solid metal).
TBH I suspect one fear across Europe of legalising stimulants would be the experiences of various countries in the 20th century, it was possible to buy dark chocolate mixed with methamphetamine over the counter in Germany and it wasn’t just Hitler and Nazis who used drugs either, they were rife throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
The recent fiascos with good strong stims being legally available across UK for 7 or more years and people just binging on them and causing themselves, their communities and the NHS all sorts of hassles hasn’t helped.
In Europe there do still seem to be double standards about benzos and diverted opiates (which are equally unhealthy) but it might just be the rest of society shrugging their shoulders and saying “at least those junkies just usually die quietly”. In any case if you live beyond 65 the health service starts handing out these sorts of drugs anyway!
@Digital Buddha 986394 wrote:
I’m not sure how or when the American overprescription epidemic started but almost anyone can get Amphetamines or Benzodiazepines if they want them. Some of it seems to be that people want to take a medication to feel better so doctors oblige and prescribe. On the other hand pharmaceutical representatives do a great job of marketing these drugs to doctors who them prescribe them excessively in some cases. It is quite possible that all the children and young adults have ADD/ADHD because of television and shit, so while marijuana is a good treatment it gets passed over for Amphetamines which are a logical choice for the condition despite the risks. As far as benzos go, many people have anxiety conditions or are irritable and these meds help them function. There are people gaming the system with these and amphetamines but its not like they’re not used legitimately and without diversion for many people. Opiates once seemed to be the most diverted drug at one point, although there has been a huge crackdown, patients often have to sign pain management contracts which involve drug tests as an out of pocket expense by the patient even if they’re on them for legit uses and have been for a long time and aren’t even taking a high value opiate. An 80mg oxycontin costs up to $80, if you have a full script of those that is a lot of cash even if you don’t sell them all. Benzo’s are like $1-2 for 1mg xanax and adderall is $2 or $3 for a 10mg tablet or capsule. Hard to get rich $1 at a time, pretty easy with a bottle full of 80mg oxycontins. This isn’t the doctor’s fault directly, but unwittingly they helped create the current opiate epidemic.
I’m only dealing with the part about why doctors prescribe and it’s my thoughts only but with the limited information I have available to me to make these assumptions. I think in general GPs prescribed because they thought they were helping, but then the government got involved and started threatening GPs for prescribing drugs that were actually needed. I think doctors for the most part are in an unwinnable situation regardless of how they view drugs.
Its still legal till the DEA gets the paperwork filed!
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Forums › Drugs › Legal & Herbal Highs › Kratom users holding their breath as DEA decides the drug’s fate
