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The other opioid crisis

Posted: September 17, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

After many years of back and knee pain, I got a prescription for hydrocodone from my doctor.

I rarely use the pills—about once or twice a month—but the government overreaction to the opioid crisis has left me and others feeling like crack addicts.

I used to get 30 pills every six months. But new government and insurance regulations force me to make an appointment every two months. That costs me $20 per session.

I have to provide a urine sample every time I see the doctor, who agrees that the restraints are extremely silly for people who don’t abuse their medication.

But my complaints about overreaction are far less serious than those who need pain relief.

The Washington Post wrote an excellent story—yes, that Washington Post—about how the opioid “crisis” has created massive problems for people who use pain drugs legally.

The news organization provided the story of Hank Skinner, 79, of Alexandria, Va., who has had seven shoulder surgeries, lung cancer, open-heart surgery, a blown-out knee, and lifelong complications from a clubfoot. He has a fentanyl patch on his belly to treat his chronic shoulder pain. He replaces the patch every three days, supplementing the slow-release fentanyl with pills containing hydrocodone.

“But to the Skinners’ dismay, Hank is now going through what is known as a forced taper. That’s when a chronic pain patient has to switch to a lower dosage of medication. His doctor, Hank says, has cut his fentanyl dosage by 50 percent — and Hank’s not happy about it. He already struggles to sleep through the night, as Carol can attest,” The Post reported.

Tami Mark, senior director of RTI International, a North Carolina think tank, said the changes in drug prescriptions might be a serious mistake. She has conducted one of the few formal studies of forced programs to cut back on legal prescriptions.

“This national effort at ‘de-prescribing’ is again being undertaken with limited research on how best to taper people off opioid medications,” Mark told The Post. “You can’t just cut off the spigot of a highly addictive medication that rewires your brain in complex ways and not anticipate negative public health consequences.”

The opioid “crisis” is a classic example of how government underreacts to a problem and then overreacts to it, leaving people angry and confused. These people—like me—aren’t drug addicts or criminals. They’re people with pain who were just following a doctor’s orders.

Trump’s Immigration Plan is Working

Posted: September 10, 2019 by chrisharper in immigration
Tags: , ,

In their continuing policy of ignoring good news about the Trump administration, the mainstream media failed to note the significant decrease in the number of illegals crossing the Mexican border.

The Border Patrol arrested about 72,000 people who tried to sneak across in July — a reduction of almost half compared with the peak of two months ago.

That means that the policy of forcing Mexico to handle more immigrants from Central America has worked well.

Mexico has 26,000 troops deployed to focus on immigration. More than 10,000 of
those are on its southern border with its Central American neighbors, and more than 15,000 others are up north.

Mexico also agreed to expand its cooperation with the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocol, a policy of taking asylum seekers from Central America who cross Mexican territory and sending them back to Mexico to wait for their cases to be heard in U.S. immigration courts.

Customs and Border Protection said some 30,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the protocol. Border cities that were so overwhelmed that they declared states of emergency are getting back to normal, with drops of 70% or more in the regions of El Paso, Texas, and Yuma,
Arizona.

The cooperation between the United States and Mexico also means that the number of people being held at the border has dropped dramatically.

While border facilities had more than 19,000 people in custody at one point in June, there were about less than 5,000 last week.

As the Democrats prepare for their debate this week, it’s worth noting that DaTimes and NPR’s most recent polling shows that 67 percent of Americans do NOT favor an open border with Mexico. Twenty-seven percent favor an open border, with 6 percent having no opinion.

If there’s any indication that the Democrats and the media are out of step with the rest of the country, immigration is an example of just how much they both don’t get it.

This just in: Trump is right on China

Posted: September 3, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

A trifecta of anti-Trump organizations—DaTimes, DaPost, and the Council on Foreign Relations—has endorsed the president’s policy on China.

As I have noted in the past, China has used government support illegally to dump cheap exports to the United States. Moreover, President Xi has claimed the South China Sea, one of the richest waterways in the world, as his own. His Belt and Road Initiative is intended to open up markets on nearly every continent. And then there’s Hong Kong.

“China can’t join all the right international clubs and go on playing by its own rules. It can’t make some trade ‘deal’ and then not be held fully accountable, relying on the infinite global capacity to turn a blind eye to its predations,” Roger Cohen writes in DaTimes.

“The president’s statement linking a trade deal and the Hong Kong demonstrations — ‘It would be very hard to deal if they do violence. I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square, it’s — I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence’ — was perhaps his finest hour.”

In DaPost, a Chinese dissident goes even further.

“[A]s someone who has spent years with the knife edge of the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on my throat for my human rights work, I know that the president is on to something. Tariffs and economic threats may be blunt tools, but they are the kind of aggressive tactics necessary to get the attention of the CCP regime, which respects only power and money. It’s not just about ‘winning,’ as the president sometimes puts it, and it’s not simply about trade: It’s about justice, and doing what’s right for ordinary Chinese and American people,” writes Chen Guangcheng, a professor at Catholic University.

The Council on Foreign Relations gives Trump a B+ on his China policy, noting that “his administration has taken the lead in awakening the United States to the growing threat that China poses to U.S. vital national interests and democratic values.”
Although the trade war will cost almost every American some amount of cash depending on the electronics, textiles, and shoes we buy, I think the policy will save us a great deal of money in the long run. And with DaTimes, DaPost, and the Council actually praising Trump, we may finally have something that conservatives and liberals can finally agree upon.

This Just In: Trump is Right on China

Posted: September 3, 2019 by chrisharper in Always look at the bright side of Trump
Tags: , , , , ,

A trifecta of anti-Trump organizations—DaTimes, DaPost, and the Council on Foreign Relations—has endorsed the president’s policy on China.

As I have noted in the past, China has used government support illegally to dump cheap exports to the United States. Moreover, President Xi has claimed the South China Sea, one of the richest waterways in the world, as his own. His Belt and Road Initiative is intended to open up markets on nearly every continent. And then there’s Hong Kong.

“China can’t join all the right international clubs and go on playing by its own rules. It can’t make some trade ‘deal’ and then not be held fully accountable, relying on the infinite global capacity to turn a blind eye to its predations,” Roger Cohen writes in DaTimes.

“The president’s statement linking a trade deal and the Hong Kong demonstrations — ‘It would be very hard to deal if they do violence. I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square, it’s — I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence’ — was perhaps his finest hour.”

In DaPost, a Chinese dissident goes even further.

“[A]s someone who has spent years with the knife edge of the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on my throat for my human rights work, I know that the president is on to something. Tariffs and economic threats may be blunt tools, but they are the kind of aggressive tactics necessary to get the attention of the CCP regime, which respects only power and money. It’s not just about ‘winning,’ as the president sometimes puts it, and it’s not simply about trade: It’s about justice, and doing what’s right for ordinary Chinese and American people,” writes Chen Guangcheng, a professor at Catholic University.

The Council on Foreign Relations gives Trump a B+ on his China policy, noting that “his administration has taken the lead in awakening the United States to the growing threat that China poses to U.S. vital national interests and democratic values.”
Although the trade war will cost almost every American some amount of cash depending on the electronics, textiles, and shoes we buy, I think the policy will save us a great deal of money in the long run. And with DaTimes, DaPost, and the Council actually praising Trump, we may finally have something that conservatives and liberals can finally agree upon.

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