Donald Trump has just noticed the Oxycontin Express

So President Trump has declared a national health emergency, an apparent opioid drug crisis. I had no idea that the opioid crisis was news. The opioid addiction crisis we read about now was already picking up steam back in 2009. I learned just how bad it was with the release of the documentary, "The Oxycontin Express", first aired on Current TV. You can still watch the video here.

The Oxycontin Express follows a man in his struggle with his addiction to the opioid pain killer, Oxycontin. We see him getting a prescription from a doctor who knows what's going on (wink, wink). From a pharmacy that knows what he's doing (nudge, nudge). And we are treated to a scene where he smokes the pills right in his car after making his score.

In his house, we see a picture of his wife or spouse, I can't remember, who died from an overdose of Oxcontin. The addict riding the Oxycontin Express is already experiencing health problems from his addiction and yet, he doesn't even consider stopping.

That was just a tiny slice of the national health emergency that Donald Trump has just now taken notice of. And it's a pretty old slice. I also think that Trump has really good timing for making his announcement. Trump made his announcement the day after Democrats introduced a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers. That's politics, right?

So set all that aside for the moment and consider this: starting in 2010, scientists observed a rapid rise in overdose deaths from pain killers, particularly, opium-based drugs. Opium, as you may already know, comes from poppy flowers and they are also used to make heroin. That tells us just how habit forming opioid drugs can be.

I can recall my adventures in high school as we watched the "just say 'no' to drugs" films and propaganda. I read the school version of what the drug culture is and was like. I noticed now how they were clear about showing us the fatalities and the jail time from drugs, but they did not show us the long term effects of drug use.

I didn't really see the impact of long term drug use until, upon the suggestion of a friend, I went to a CA meeting to do stand up comedy. Now I can say that I've seen what people look like after years on meth, cocaine and heroin, in person. Those drugs can add 10 or 20 years to someone's face and it doesn't take very long to do real damage. I've seen the before and after pictures on the internet and they do not really do the subjects justice.

But as I write this looking back, I am beginning to realize that we have a serious health crisis on our hands, and that I'd been aloof from it all (I don't read the local news much). And I see the battle over health care that is raging right now. Here in Utah, we have a major drug crisis that got so bad, that even this Red State had applied for and received $5.5 million in new federal cash in May of this year. And that was before Congress even passed it's first budget under Trump.

As a side note, it's worth noting that Forbes has reported that Congress has been conducting extensive partisan and parliamentary gamesmanship to avoid passing a real budget, first to repeal Obamacare an effort that failed, and then to adopt massive tax cuts that will balloon the deficit in ways that Obama could only dream of. See? Deficits don't really matter to Republicans as long as they pay tribute to the wealthy. And that is Forbes magazine reporting on the news that deficits don't matter. Even Dave Stockman, once Director of the OMB under Reagan, is bearish on GOP budget ambitions.

But more to the point, most of the drug war effort has been focused on inflicting pain on people who use drugs. That effort seems ignorant of the fact that people who are addicted to drugs believe that they are truly and utterly powerless over their addiction. If they had any real power, they would do something different. That's why they seek help. And if they hit bottom, they're not going to have the resources to get the help they need.

What does that bottom look like? No home, no car, soup kitchens and rehab houses. They're lucky if their family knows where they are. And lots of free medical care wherever they can get it. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking "they deserved it, so why I should pay for that"? Um, probably because that addict could be someone you know and you don't have the resources to help him or her.

The GOP has said something to the effect of, "get government out of this business and let private enterprise find a way to help those people". But there is no profit in helping people who have no money. Not unless government steps in to help them.

The subtext of the message from the GOP is that punishment works. Well, we have the largest prison population in the world. Many of them are in the slammer for light drug offenses and have very little access to tools and education they need to get out. Our prison population has become a cash cow for private enterprise, and "since they deserved" to be in prison, they don't deserve any help, right?

I think it's also worth noting that for the last 40 years, America has been on a neoliberal trip. The term, "neolliberal" is just a fancy word for fiscally conservative, but in that, there is still plenty of conservative morals mixed in, so don't let that "liberal" part fool you into thinking that neoliberals are fiscally conservative yet liberal in other ways.

Reagan was a neoliberal. Clinton was a neoliberal. Even Obama was a neoliberal. They all had this notion that if we allow money to move more freely for the wealthy, that somehow, the rest of us would enjoy the virtuous cycle. All of that neoliberalism helped to get us to this point, of having a healthcare crisis, a fight over health care and a large group of people who apparently lack the motivation to do better.

Having seen drug addicts in a variety of contexts over the course of my adult life, I believe that drug addiction is not a moral crisis. It is evidence of a skills deficit. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a counselor. I even spent some time at Redgate Memorial Recovery Center in Long Beach, California, just to see what it is like to be a counselor. That is very difficult work, but very rewarding for the people who can do it. Looking back on my experience there, to see how they suffered, I'm pretty sure that drug addiction is evidence of a lack of skills.

We've been taught to believe that drug addiction is a moral crisis. That somehow, we are motivated to be addicted. Yes, drugs can be powerful magnets for immoral behavior, but drugs in and of themselves do nothing. If people don't take them, drugs do nothing.

But people take them because they have psychological or physiological dependence on drugs, so they see them as the best choice or their only choice for relief from their pain. People take drugs to relieve emotional pain because they lack the skills to cope with their pain. Given a choice, I don't think anyone wants to be addicted to drugs.

If people who are addicted to drugs had better coping skills, then drugs might not seem so palatable. If they had a good support network, people to call, places to go, things to do, that can help them to displace the feelings and thoughts they had before they took the first pill, then they might be OK.

But all of that requires a willingness to help, and it's hard to help someone when you've already made a moral case against them. It's hard to help someone if you believe that they lack the motivation to do better. I happen to be an optimist, so I always assume that motivation is not an issue with anyone. I can't read their minds, so I look at their behavior in the context of skills.

When a person fails at reading, it's a clear lack of skills. When a person fails at a job, it's a lack of skills. The moment we slip into questioning someone's motivation, we are mind reading. But we can say with a fair amount of confidence that failure is more about skills than motivation. If someone were not motivated to succeed at a task, why would he even try?

This mind reading is why we have focused on criminalizing drugs rather that building and providing the infrastructure needed for drug treatment. In drug treatment, we teach the coping skills that people need to stay off drugs. And when people learn those skills, they feel something called "gratification", because instead of getting a fish for free, they learn how to fish.

Incidentally, those 12-step programs teach coping skills to drug addicts at little or no cost to the user or society. They teach the skill of collaboration, of being accountable, of respecting other people. Treatment facilities like Redgate also teach those skills. Teaching those skills and learning those skills are rewarding. Sending people to prison for drug offenses is not rewarding to anyone except the businesses that use prison labor.

So I hope with this drug crisis, like so many before them, that we learn to err on the side of treatment rather than enforcement. Don't beat them with a stick, use the stick to point the way to a better life.