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Suicide
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Deaths of Despair

“The 8 percent rise in suicides among adults 65 and older was the highest driver in suicide deaths, the CDC said, with 10,433 deaths in that age group alone.” – BPNews

Discussion

Tue, 08/15/23

....is that a number of the 100,000 drug overdose deaths per year may be quiet suicides. I don't know that you can prove it either way, but it's something that we ought to contemplate.

(it's personal for me, since our family buried my niece after an apparent fentanyl overdose. How anyone can justify providing a drug that is lethal in extremely small doses to addicts--generally people who have no clue about dosage--is beyond me)

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Tue, 08/15/23

Illegal drug dealers seem to specialize in not bothering to justify their actions. But I often wonder how that even works from a marketing standpoint. They are literally killing their market. All I can think of is that demand must be high enough for “the good stuff,” that they can profit short term even though increasing numbers are buyers are killed.

The ethical decisions get complicated for medical and law enforcement. Sort of. Naloxone (aka Narcan) is increasingly available to police and EMTs as an emergency OD reversal. This saves lives, but maybe it also preserves the market for these deadly drugs. I still think the ethical thing to do is save the life of the person in front of you. It’s another example of why utilitarianism fails as an ethical approach. You can’t idly watch someone die reasoning that it’s for the greater good. (Well, you can, but you shouldn’t.)

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 08/15/23

It wouldn't have saved my niece--she died at home alone--but my thought about putting Narcan in police cruisers is that it might give police and EMTs a great chance to help people. More or less, "Fella, I gave you Narcan when your lips were blue and I was pretty darned sure you were not going to make it otherwise. Let's see what we can do to change your situation before I get there too late." Great example might be the George Floyd case. How much mayhem could have been avoided if a dose or two had been there and used?

Yes, you'll get "repeat customers", and you'll get the frustration of finding that on the 10th time, Narcan didn't bring Bob back, but overall I see the benefits far oughtweighing the risks for the police and EMTs to have this.

I'm a bit more ambivalent about over the counter prescriptions, because it could be seen as a way to get closer and closer to the edge and not go over. That noted, if I were persuaded that I was likely to be able to use it to help someone, I might be persuaded to put a dose in my backpack or car. Not there yet, though.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.