• About

Sacred Cow Chips

Sacred Cow Chips

Tag Archives: Prohibitionism

Buttinskies Get Vapours Over Vapes, Rx Pain Killers

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by pnoetx in Prohibition

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Black Market, Chronic Pain, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, e-Cigarettes, Opioid Deaths, OxyContin, Paternalism, Prescription Opioids, Prohibitionism, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, Rashida Tlaib, Smoking Cessation, Taxing Harms, Tort Reform, Trump Administration, Vaping

Every now and then I have to grind my axe against reflexive prohibitionism and the misplaced blame for health issues that runs along with it. This time, my outburst is prompted first by a recent study of opioid deaths, and by developments in the vastly less horrifying vaping scare. Both of these issues are like red meat to the busy-bodies of the world, who just can’t stand to sit by knowing that someone might be doing something into which they might affect an heroic intervention.

Pain Is the Price

Pharmaceutical companies have been settling opioid lawsuits brought against them for failing to provide adequate warnings with opioid painkillers about the potential for addiction, for allegedly distributing quantities in areas with “vulnerable” populations, and for other aggressive marketing tactics. Purdue Pharmaceuticals filed for bankruptcy after agreeing to $12 billion in settlements. Many more cases remain for these companies. Settlements, of course, are not admissions of guilt. Rather, they are the least costly way for these companies to extract themselves from situations in which they have been scapegoated by the grieving families of victims, plaintiffs’ attorneys with instincts for deep pockets, and naive reporting by an uninformed news media.

This week came reports of a new study in Massachusetts that found only a small percentage of opioid deaths in which decedents had been prescribed an opioid. According to the researchers:

“The major proximal contributors to opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts during the study period were illicitly made fentanyl and heroin. … The people who died with a prescription opioid like oxycodone in their toxicology screen often don’t have a prescription for it.”  

And as Jacob Sullum notes at the last link, this is in line with a number of other studies:

“A 2007 study found that 78 percent of OxyContin users seeking addiction treatment reported that they had never been prescribed the drug for any medical reason. Other studies have found that only a small minority of people treated for pain, ranging from something like 1 percent of post-surgical patients to less than 8 percent of chronic pain patients, become addicted to their medication. A 2015 study of opioid-related deaths in North Carolina found 478 fatalities among 2.2 million residents who were prescribed opioids in 2010, an annual rate of 0.022 percent.”

Most people who become addicted to opioids, and most people who OD, begin their use in pursuit of a high. There are issues over which the pharmaceutical industry can be criticized, but it does not deserve much blame for abuse of the medications it produces. Providing pain medications to health care providers for patients with legitimate needs should not be subject to such severe legal risk. This fraught legal environment has a chilling effect on the willingness of manufacturers to meet those needs, not to mention risk-averse physicians. You, too, are likely to suffer severe pain one day, and your plight will be made worse by these effective prohibitionists.

The Vaping Panic

The dangers of vaping are vastly exaggerated, and the tremendous benefits of vaping for those wishing to quit smoking cigarettes have seemingly been forgotten. Vaping products are far less dangerous than cigarettes, but it matters little to prohibitionists at the federal and state levels. This includes the Trump Administration and such Democrats as Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who have jumped on the anti-vaping bandwagon with an opportunistic fervor.

Vaping has increased dramatically among teenagers. Flavored or otherwise, it is likely to have substituted for cigarettes among teens to some extent. Many adult vapers seem to like flavored vaping products as well. As others have noted, a ban on flavored vaping products will make little difference: vapers like the nicotine! And like any form of prohibition, vaping bans will lead to more dangerous varieties of product as buyers turn to the black market for vaping supplies, or simply smoke more cigarettes.

A recent proposal in the House Ways and Means Committee to tax e-cigarettes is also terribly misguided. If we’re going to “nudge” anyone, which in this case is to follow the traditional economic prescription to tax things that harm, then surely we ought to consider where the greater harm lies. Cigarettes are already taxed. Introducing a tax on a relatively new alternative constituting a far lesser harm is sure to have undesirable effects on public health.

Summary

It must be cathartic to identify someone or something to blame for tragedies for which the victims themselves are largely at fault. We know too that the enterprise of bringing legal action against corporate scapegoats is financially rewarding. Unfortunately, those scapegoats can have little confidence in the courts’ ability to reach objective decisions, so they feel compelled to settle with plaintiffs at still great expense. It’s a racket that leads to stunted development of new drugs and under-prescription of painkillers. Tort reform, potentially to include caps on damages and financial risks to plaintiffs attorneys, can mitigate these effects, and it is as important now as ever.

Alarmism over vaping creates risks of a different nature. Vaping is not free of risk, but neither is it a massive threat to public health. It is, in fact, a less harmful alternative than cigarette smoking. Authorities should be cautious in their approach to regulating vapes and e-cigarettes, lest they discourage attractive and safer alternatives to smoking.

Follow Sacred Cow Chips on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Observations on the Dobbs Decision
  • Medicare For All … and Tax Hikes, Long Waits, Inferior Care
  • A Fiscal Real-Bills Doctrine? No Such Thing As Painless Inflation Tax
  • Honeybees Are and Have Been Thriving
  • New Theory: Great Woke Filter Conceals Life In the Cosmos

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014

Blogs I Follow

  • Passive Income Kickstart
  • OnlyFinance.net
  • TLC Cholesterol
  • Nintil
  • kendunning.net
  • DCWhispers.com
  • Hoong-Wai in the UK
  • Marginal REVOLUTION
  • CBS St. Louis
  • Watts Up With That?
  • Aussie Nationalist Blog
  • American Elephants
  • The View from Alexandria
  • The Gymnasium
  • A Force for Good
  • ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together
  • Notes On Liberty
  • troymo
  • SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers
  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library

Blog at WordPress.com.

Passive Income Kickstart

OnlyFinance.net

Financial Matters!

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

CBS St. Louis

News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and St. Louis' Top Spots

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together

PERSPECTIVE FROM AN AGING SENIOR CITIZEN

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

  • Follow Following
    • Sacred Cow Chips
    • Join 120 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Sacred Cow Chips
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...