The US Opioid Epidemic
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo
Stanton
The US
Opioid Crisis
It’s been about three years since I
wrote something on the opioid epidemic ravaging this nation. It first came to
my attention about when I was preparing to be a guest on a radio program to
discuss the riots in Baltimore following the
Freddie Gray death at the hands of the Baltimore
police. I was researching some
demographics about the drug use in Baltimore
when I saw an article stating the newest demographic for heroine and opiate
addiction were white women and whites between the ages of 25-53. Unlike inner
city addition these new addicts were mostly rural whites. I discovered whites
in rural Maryland
were experiencing a huge spike in overdoes and death so much so, Maryland State
Police were carrying the drug Naloxone to prevent overdoses.
Subsequently I started noticing
similar reports in states like Vermont, Ohio and West
Virginia and I realized the opioid epidemic’s main
victims were white folks. Today the overdose epidemic is so pervasive you
routinely hear public service announcements on local and national radio and
television stating addiction is a disease that help is available. When opium,
heroine and alcohol were being dumped in the barrios, Indian reservations and
ghetto communities in the 50’s, ‘60’s 70’s 80’s, 90’s, into the twenty-first
century nothing like this was said.
Now that escalating numbers of white people
are getting strung out and dying, drug addiction is a public health crisis, not
a judgment on the morality and worth of the addicts like it was when the CIA
and Mafia were dumping drugs in our communities! But it was the Black and Brown
users not the white users or importers who were targeted for arrest and
incarceration under a totally bogus “War on Drugs”. Now that whites are the majority being strung
out the official mantra is, “we can’t arrest our way out of this problem.” What
a difference pigment makes in the way policies are made and monies
appropriated.
When I
spoke on the radio program about Baltimore
I provided relevant historic background. I noted the Karmic irony that Baltimore was a bustling port city that was the port of
export for tobacco, an extremely addictive substance back to Europe
in the eighteenth century. Baltimore
was also an entry point for kidnapped Africans who were herded into and held in
pens on Pratt Street
until they could be sold and shipped elsewhere.
Later Baltimore
became an entry port for European immigrants coming from traumatized background
situations created by European elites in Ireland
and Germany.
This mix of traumatized persons led to racial animus,
conflict and state sanctioned repression especially of Blacks. I talked about
the devastating impact of deindustrialization on the region, the scourge of illicit
drugs like heroine and crack cocaine had on Baltimore
but that now Mexican opium and opioid pain killers were on the rise in the
suburbs and wrecking havoc in the rural areas of Maryland. I pointed out this was not being covered by the corporate
media.
Since then
I’ve causally followed the rise of opioid addiction and overdoses but paid
close attention to the different public policy pronouncements and priorities
now that whites are succumbing to heroine and opiate drugs. The US is
experiencing a real crisis and public health officials, politicians and sociologists
are extremely concerned because of the rising addiction, overdose and death
rates.
Overzealous prescription writing by doctors,
imploding socio-economic conditions and the profit motive are fueling a
devastating increase in death and bondage to synthetic opioids and
heroine. “The rate of heroin-related
overdose deaths nationwide has nearly quadrupled since 2002. An estimated
30,000 people die every year from opioid overdoses. But unlike drug epidemics
of the past, minority populations have seen a less dramatic increase in drug
addiction and deaths compared to young white adults. The rate of heroin use
among white adults increased by 114% between 2004 and 2013, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate among nonwhite adults
remained relatively unchanged during that same period…The stark rise in
addiction can be traced back to the increased use of prescription pain
relievers such as OxyContin and Vicodin. Prescriptions for opioid analgesic
medications have skyrocketed since the introduction of OxyContin in the
mid-1990s. In 2012, the number of prescriptions written for opioid drugs
reached 259 million. Regulators only a few years ago began implementing
stricter limits on the number of pain pills doctors could prescribe, which
resulted in lower prescribing rates for opioids, but also led to a subsequent
rise in heroin use, a cheaper and easier alternative to prescription pain
medicines.” The racial divide in the opioid epidemic. Steven Ross Johnson
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160227/MAGAZINE/302279871.
Public health officials are
concerned about the causes and outcomes of the epidemic. Overdoses are at an
all time high. “Opioid prescribing continues to fuel the epidemic. Today, 40%
of all
U.S.
opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. In 2016, more than
46 people died every day from overdoses involving prescription opioids… Overdose
is not the only risk related to prescription opioids. Misuse, abuse, and opioid
use disorder (addiction) are also potential dangers. In 2014, almost 2 million
Americans abused or were dependent on prescription opioids. As many as 1 in 4
people who receive prescription opioids long term for non-cancer pain in
primary care settings struggles with addiction.
Every day, over
1,000 people are treated in emergency departments for misusing prescription
opioids.”
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html
Go to
https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf
to see a comprehensive report on opioid addiction.
It is unlikely the social
conditions fueling the personal and collective depression, despondency,
helplessness, alienation and pain will abate any time soon. As a people we have
to call upon the resiliency of our ancestors and tap into the well of energy
within ourselves and use our imagination to vision and fashion a lives,
environment and world worthy of our innate and intrinsic genius and being.
Greater is that which is inside us than that which is in the world.
-30-
The Real Martin Luther King Jr.
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Real Martin Luther
King Jr.
This weekend we will hear
repeated snippets from the 1963 March on Washington Speech by Reverend Martin
Luther King Jr that is often referred to as the “I have a Dream” speech.
The ruling elites who ordered King
killed want us to think all King did was offer up oratory, idealistic dreams
and lead a few marches. What they don’t want us to remember is that he was a fighter
for social and economic justice. King was a passionate champion for PEACE and
brotherhood. His passion and activism troubled the ruling elites because their socio-economic
system is predicated on endemic injustice, suffering poverty and war.
The March
on Washington
speech was a searing indictment against American racial and economic oppression
but you never ever hear the full speech. All we ever hear is the “I have a
dream part”. The whole speech needs to be read heard and understood to get a
glimpse of what King was really about.
In it he said, “I am happy to join
with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration
for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose
symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This
momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years
later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the
Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of
poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years
later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and
finds himself an exile in his own land.
So we have come here today to
dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to
our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote
the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,
they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men,
would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
It is obvious
today that America
has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are
concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has
given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked
"insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of
justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in
the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this
check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the
security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the
fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off
or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real
the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate
valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to
lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood.
Now is the
time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation
to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's
legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of
freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.
Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content
will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There
will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted
his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is
something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which
leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place
we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst
for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must
forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We
must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again
and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with
soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community
must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white
brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that
their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their
freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
As we walk,
we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be
satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the
unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as
our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels
of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as
the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can
never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and
robbed of their dignity by signs stating ‘For Whites Only’. We cannot be
satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi
cannot vote and a Negro in New York
believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we
will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like
a mighty stream.
I am not
unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.
Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from
areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of
persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the
veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned
suffering is redemptive.
Go back to
Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia,
go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow
in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties
of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the
American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live
out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the
red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave
owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a
dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
a state sweltering with the heat of injustice sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in
Alabama, with its vicious racists with
its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and
‘nullification’ one day right there in
Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with
little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream
today.
I have a dream that one day every
valley shall be exalted every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough
places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith
that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of
the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to
transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of
brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray
together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom
together knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day; this will be
the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: “My
country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my
fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride from every mountainside, let freedom
ring!” And if America
is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the
prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the
heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom
ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that: Let freedom ring from
Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside
let freedom ring.
And when this happens and when we
allow freedom ring when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city we will be able to speed up that day when all
of God’s children, black men and white men Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro
spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’
Those were
not the words of a passive, idle dreamer, no. Martin Luther King Jr waged
relentless struggles that forced the ruling class to relent and forced the
government to pass laws that addressed and rectified over one hundred years of
electoral disenfranchisement. King and the little people who supported him were
responsible for social change that opened public accommodations and broke the
barriers of racial apartheid. America
was not going to change without some sort of catalyst or pressure Rosa Parks,
King SNCC, the Nation of Islam provided that pressure.
King was very knowledgeable about world events;
he saw the big picture, the global scenario. King was actively planning a
multi-racial, multi ethnic Poor People’s Campaign in Washington D.C. to call
attention to the plight of the common people and demand redistribution of
wealth and an end to the wars and their stranglehold on the morals of the
country.
King was the most prominent voice against the US imperialist war in Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia).
None of his well known white religious contemporaries like Billie Graham,
Norman Vincent Peale or Bishop Fulton Sheen took pro-PEACE positions. Martin
Luther King Jr. exposed the immoral nexus linking war, militarism, imperialism
with domestic oppression. For this he was demonized, ostracized, labeled persona non grata and marked for death by the ruling class and their media flunkies.
King was a profound force for
social change in America.
When he was
shot down in Memphis Tennessee, King was agitating on behalf of
mostly Black municipal sanitation worker’s union in their struggle for honest
wages and respect from the city leadership.
In one speech King called for
transforming the Jericho Road
which he used as a metaphor for America.
He said, “On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's
roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see
that the whole Jericho
road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is
more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It
comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
King realized America needed
restructuring. This weekend don’t fall for the ruling class
media King narrative. King was about thorough and systematic structural change
not limited community service projects. It’s time we remember the real Martin
Luther King Jr. and act on his dream.
-30-
The Tax Cut Scam
From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Tax Cut Scam
The Republicans’ tax cut
legislation disingenuously entitled The
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed and was signed into law on December 22, 2017,
thereby enabling them to claim a major victory for their party, congress and
the president. The Republicans hyped this legislation as a huge catalyst that
will spur investment, higher incomes, productivity and the creation of millions
of jobs. Not so.
This is just spin and lies. Tax
cuts for the rich have been a staple of the Koch Brothers and the other right
wing billionaires who fund Republican (and some Democrat) politicians for years
and is ideological fodder for the Libertarian economic mantra. But the historical
fact and reality are; tax cuts both on the marginal and the corporate rates do
not and have not translated into boosts for long term economic growth,
increased productivity or higher worker wages. It is pure spin designed to dupe
and fool the masses into passively supporting legislation that benefits the
super rich.
The fact is, the tax cuts will give
us a few extra dollars in our take home pay, but this is not a pay raise!! Your wages will remain the same, meaning your
gross pay stays the same but you will just take home a few more dollars in each
paycheck. Wages for working class folks have remained stagnant since the 1970’s
and the tax cuts are not going to change this reality. “The majority of
Americans share in economic growth through the wages they receive for their
labor, rather than through investment income. Unfortunately, many of these
workers have fared poorly in recent decades. Since the early 1970s, the hourly
inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen,
growing only 0.2% per year. In other words, though the economy has been
growing, the primary way most people benefit from that growth has almost
completely stalled.” Why Wages Aren’t
Growing In
America
Jay Shambaugh and Ryan Nunn.
https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america
The corporate tax reductions will put more
money in the pockets of the corporate CEOs and their shareholders but the
benefits will not trickle down to workers nor improve hourly wages. “The centerpiece of the Republican tax plan is
a massive corporate tax cut, from 35 percent to 20 percent, which is expected
to disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Shares of stock in the businesses
that pay corporate income are mostly owned by the wealthy, and the top
executives whose compensation packages are linked to stock market performance
are also much richer than the average American. So the bill’s cut in the
corporate tax rate is going to help them the most. It would also overhaul the
individual tax code in a way that almost every independent analysis has shown
would direct most of the benefits to the wealthy. In 2019, a person in the
bottom 10 percent gets a $50 tax cut and a person in the top 1 percent gets a
$34,000 tax cut. Other provisions, like rolling back the estate tax, are
unambiguous giveaways to the richest Americans.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/2/16720952/senate-tax-bill-inequality
The
Republicans passed the legislation which was actually written by lobbyists without
debate or support from the Democrats. “President Donald Trump rubber-stamped
his party’s revision to the
U.S. tax code on Friday, capping a
year in which lobbyists working to influence tax law poured millions into the
reelection campaigns of Congress. Lobbyists working on issues related to taxes
donated $9.6 million to members of Congress during the first nine months of
2017. Among the 11,078 total lobbyists who have registered and actively lobbied
so far in 2017, about 58 percent – or 6,421 – lobbied on the issue of taxes,
according to quarterly disclosure forms filed between January and September. Almost
a quarter of these “tax lobbyists” – or 1,476 – made political contributions.
Their combined average contribution during the first three quarters of the 2018
cycle was $6,520.”
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/12/tax-lobbyists-contributions/.
In other words the lobbyists bribed the congress critters.
It is a totally partisan bill but
that’s not the worst of it. This bill is built on totally bogus presumptions
that have proven over almost one hundred years to be untrue. A report by the
Congressional Research Service in 2012 revealed there is no correlation between
top tax rate cuts and economic growth. You can read the report at
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42729.pdf.
The report was released in 2012 but Republicans demanded the CRS table it
because they said it was too negative; but in reality it debunked their
rationale for tax cuts for the rich.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act contradicts human nature and how capitalism
works. Absent strong and protracted pressure, the rich and multinational
corporations aren’t going to transfer their money from tax havens in the Cayman
Islands or Switzerland back to the US, they are not going to give their workers
raises (since organized labor is almost non-existent) and they are not going to
relocate their overseas factories and jobs to the United States! They are going to take their extra money and
pocket it or buy additional stock shares to drive up the Stock Market, give themselves
raises and their shareholders additional dividends. That’s what capitalism is
all about. After all, they paid their
lobbyists millions to influence and write legislation that favors them and
makes their tax cut benefits permanent.
“The Koch network will launch a
multimillion-dollar push next year to sell the bill, with paid advertising and
town halls to educate voters. A major GOP super PAC is planning to spend $10
million to protect House members. And another group, the Committee to Unleash
Prosperity, plans to spend the majority of its $1 million annual budget selling
the tax plan next year, according to one of the group’s founders, Stephen
Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and an
informal economic adviser to the president.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/21/gop-tax-plan-marketing-push-313231
The tax
cuts for working folks will expire seven years from now, while the breaks for
the super rich are permanent! This is a
scam. This is why honest economists are
saying this legislation will widen the wealth gap between the rich and the
poor. Take the miniscule tax cut (it’s already law) but don’t fall for the
Republican’s okey-doke and flim flam about it creating more jobs, increasing
savings and raising incomes.
-30-
