No, Not Those Kinds Of Drugs
Florida Is Cocaine, if the movies and gangsta rappers are telling us the truth. But the most popular drugs of choice in Florida are proving to be far more dangerous, downright far more deadly, than cocaine, meth or heroin.
From the New York Times :
An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.
The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.
Seems the federal government needs to refocus its War On Drugs to the legal substances that are slaughtering people in near epidemic levels. But going to war on the US-based pharmaceutical drug dealers and makers, who contribute millions to election campaigns, doesn't provide much opportunity to fund and arm anti-government forces across South America. So that's out...
The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).
I had a friend years back who insisted that when he was in his late teens, he once tried to commit suicide by pot overdose. eating and smoking half an ounce of sticky hydro buds in three hours. He said he wanted to die, but he loved pot so much he couldn't stand to die from any other drug.
He didn't die. He got sleepy, then hungry, stumbled up to the local late night pizza shop and met a girl while he was melting into a table waiting for his favourite family-sized bacon, pineapple and olive pizza ((blech!) to come out of the oven. The girl said his pizza choice was disgusting, so he bet her $10 that if she took one bite she'd want to eat the whole slice. He won the bet and they fell in love. So trying to overdose on cannabis actually saved his life, in a weird and positive way. I digress...
Incredible. Ten times more people die from oxycodone than die from smack. Ten times.The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.
How many of these legal drug overdoses are actually old people euthanizing each other and themselves isn't detailed.
Florida cops call the plague of legal drugs and the resulting deaths "an epidemic" and "explosive."
