curious consumers

responses to yesterday's column

In the spirit of this column, I offer a photograph I took yesterday of a lily earlier this week in front of an Eastport residence.

I don’t believe I have received feedback as instantaneously as I did to yesterday’s column ‘Cars, not busses’. One responder noted she would not have thought of this so I am glad I introduced a new thought, even if a sad one.

The other two responses need a little further discussion to broaden our conversation.

“I’ll not rant about my feelings on the drug issue as well as the mental health issues that seem to be rampant in our country. And I’ll show my non-fully-educated (probably non-empathetic) side by admitting I don’t really understand why criminal activity conducted by a person with mental health issues seems to get a ‘pass’ with no accountability. I was watching a show last night with Right and Left perspectives on the Hunter Biden issue. The Right continued to hammer home his drug addiction issue which presumably led to a lot of bad decisions…some potentially criminal. The Left just hung their hat on ‘‘…but he’s an addict’..." Does that excuse all his actions?”

It is true my comments did not confront the lawlessness of the heroin addicted that my daughter encounters on the busses. I don’t dispute that my column did not address this point. Drug usage, particularly something like heroin, remains a decidedly dangerous, illegal activity that can result in incarceration.

But our society presently , if I understand it at all, focuses on the distributor rather than the consumer. We could change that but actions create consequences. Perhaps our current concern is wrong (his point in the response) but we tend to approach the consumer who is an addict more sympathetically, apparently with the understanding that the absolute compulsion of acquiring the drug outweighs the traditional ‘free will’ argument about consumption. I may well be getting this wrong which is why I so strongly suggest, plead, and hope any of you will chime in.

Addiction is generally discussed in America as an unavoidable physical compulsion in an action-reaction cycle of consumption by the body. Perhaps that is wrong or maybe I don’t understand what I read or hear but the underlying assumption seems to be that penalising someone thus afflicted is inconsistent with what their bodies allow them to do at the time.

It’s a bit like struggling with the overweight body (something about which I do know a vast amount): science today indicates that only the strictest, unrelenting compunction to remain in a calorie deficit almost daily for life will allow someone to retain any weight loss after being heavy. Period. Even then, the success rate is less than ten percent, because genes, age and environmental factors lead almost invariably to reversing the loss because additional calories accumulate to create a calorie surplus. It’s not merely that overweight people have poor impulse control but there are many more intricate factors fighting your good intention all the way.

Encarcerating drug consumers would multiple costs dramatically. We can make that choice if we are willing to pay for it, financially, physically or societally. We can shoot them as other countries do if we are willing to make that choice (I would not subscribe to that solution). But those are two choices which society is not confronting. It is a messy world.

None of that addresses the initial decision to go illegal, of course. I certainly did not address that crux of the aforementioned problem but are we ignoring that part by not penalising the addict, as this reader suggests? I welcome your thoughts on this point, a decidedly different only than we generally consider. As uncomfortable as this comment may be, it needed to be made and I thank the writer for drawing us to something we are dancing around.

‘Is it a demand problem? Anymore than obsesity or alcoholism or gambling is a demand problem. Yes, the last step will always have consequences of their actions, but I suspect there is room to ask some questions of those providing the options to choose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painkiller_(TV_series) “

The other response I received was about my use of ‘demand’, pointing out the well-established Sackler case with regard to opiod addiction in this country. The explosion of opiod problems across the nation over the past thirty years resulted, according to federal investigators, from the Sackler family of Perdue Pharma promoting studies ignoring the addictive nature of oxycontin, their product, in pain treatment. By manipulating evidence, the pharmacy company encouraged doctors to overprescribe the narcotic, setting into motion a slide into addictive behaviours in rural, urban, and all other parts of America with unforeseen damage to social fabric while the Sackler family made tens of billions of dollars. Perdue Pharma declared bankruptcy in 2019 in the face of as thousands of lawsuits regarding its behaviour. The Supreme Court, ten months ago, halted the federal settlement on benefits to the addicts’ families so the case remains unsettled but no one disputes the incredible financial gains for the Sacklers as a result of knowingly promoting an addictive drug.

Is that a demand issue or is that a supply issue? Are all addictions supply side like oxycontin or is the demand important? Does it matter for the addicted? I simply don’t know. It is a reasonable question which overall needs consideration but is any universal answer appropriate or was my assumption in my phraseology wrong? I again most heartily welcome your thoughts.

Days like yesterday are why I write ACC. I want to expand our collective consideration rather assume there is a single answer which is so obvious. Sometimes that is true but far too often it’s much more an actions create consequences issue. Thank you for reading this and any column. Please feel free to circulate if you find of value. Thank those who subscribe with financial support as it keeps me going.

My daughter, as it turned out, has decided she will delay her car pursuit. For at least a little longer, she is willing to ride public transport for her activities. How long that will last I don’t know but actions…

Be well, please keep those cards and letters flowing, and be safe. FIN

Devan Cole and Ariane de Vogue, ‘Supreme Court blocks $6 billion opiod settlement that would have given Sackler family immunity’, cnn.com, 10 August 2023, retrieved at https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/politics/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement/index.html