What are recent events going to do to the price of heroin?

like when i think of the fact that a company was literally marketing an opiate for the masses, it makes me want to shoot fire out of my eyes

the fact that cannabis remains illegal at the same time as this toxin is prescribed is similarly bonkers

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/08/antidote

Ian Frazier's article on naloxone use in Staten Island covers some of the same ground as those Al Jazeera articles.

This line made me clench my teeth:

It used to be that the medical profession undertreated pain.

"undertreated" based on what?

Not giving people all of the pills available onsite?

It's hard to believe the New Yorker can publish this article without mentioning:

-- the well-documented role of Pharma in promoting the use of chronic opioids for non-cancer chronic pain (the idea that chronic pain is undertreated was a marketing slogan, a successful example of disease mongering in an effort to widen the circle of acceptable or standard prescribing practice)
-- the increasingly well supported evidence that chronic opioid use can and does paradoxically worsen chronic pain, to the point that ongoing use is counterproductive. The Wikipedia article is brief but makes the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid-induced_hyperalgesia

Instead the article leads with the idea that the use of opioids increased purely because of clinical need (pain was "undertreated" in the bad old days) and does little to challenge the idea that some prescriptions for opioids (I'd say "many", but in an article like this I'd settle for "some") are unnecessary, counterproductive and actually harmful to the patients who are taking them.

It talks about "overdose" and "misuse" of prescription meds, and implies that many or most of the harmful outcomes come from "addicts" and from those buying the pills from dealers. It barely attempts to show the potential downsides to routine use by prescription under a doctor's supervision -- itself a major risk for accidental overdose (usually non-fatal, but not always), for other forms of harm (accidents, falls, injuries), and a proven independent risk factor for increased all-cause mortality. It also doesn't present evidence showing what percentage (let alone absolute numbers) of people have been iatrogenically brought to a point of opioid dependence and/or addiction (and thereafter turned to illegally obtained pills, etc).

Better yet, the article goes on and on about a new delivery form of Narcan, as if the older method of Narcan administration by IV was somehow a major barrier to successful resuscitation of overdosed patients over the years. Nasal sprays are convenient, but the evidence shows they're roughly equivalent in benefit to IV -- faster and easier to administer, but a little slower to take effect, so the net effect is comparable -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19731165

It's nice that good people are trying to save lives on the front lines, and seeing some good results with getting Narcan into the hands of opioid users ahead of time, but that's a weird focus for an article that could otherwise do a much more comprehensive job of showing what a huge problem has developed in opioid use and abuse over the last 30 or so years.

Of course, doing that would invite outrage from the (I'm sure) many New Yorker readers who are taking opioids for chronic non-cancer pain, and who might not taking kindly to the idea that that might be part of the problem.