OVERDOSE AMERICA

OVERDOSE AMERICA

By Robert Vickens

overdose-america

How many years have passed since heroin and crack reigned supreme in the streets and ruined our neighborhoods? Enough for three or four generations to feel their effects. In the 60’s and 70’s flower children and black power revolutionaries enjoyed plenty of good grass, pure cocaine, and heavenly heroin – little did they know, riding that train came with a one-way ticket straight to hell. We lost musicians and idols due to overdoses and addiction. When crack hit in the 80’s a new insanity was brought down upon civilization. Mother’s forgot to take care of their sons, sons stole from their mothers, and fathers were nowhere to be found. Gun ownership became a prerequisite for life in the inner city. Cities like St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Miami saw a drastic increase in their crime rate. Death, ignorance, disease, and poverty came like the four horsemen galloping through the ghettos in Lamborghinis. The nation received some sort of reprieve and a semblance of peace when the late 90’s and early 2000’s came around; pharmaceutical companies and politicians addressed the need for medications to deal with these mental sicknesses: depression, anxiety, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention hyperactive deficit disorder, et al. In addition, these pills were also used to treat patients who dealt with excruciating pain after having major surgical operations. Pain medications, antidepressants, and mental stimulants seemed to be a Godsend.

This was a ruse clever enough to rival that of the antichrist. Make them think they’re getting better, when in fact, they’re getting worse. Those same politicians lined their pockets with the profits garnered from the lobbyists in big pharmaceutical companies who needed their drugs approved by the FDA. Whenever a patient came in for treatment doctors went mad with greed prescribing patients pills for all sorts of “pain.” The pill mills found a natural home in Florida – a state that was literally built on the drug trade. In the words of a Marine with PTSD who was stationed overseas: “We were out burning poppy fields that belonged to the czars. Well, there would be these roped off sections where we weren’t authorized to go. The CIA would come into the field close to the end of our run, and collect the roped off portion to bring back to the states.”

Now that the pill mills have been taken down a new monster has crawled out from beneath the rock. (Or, perhaps they’re old monsters reincarnated in their second lives?) Crack rock and heroin have made a comeback. The effects can be seen in the rehab cultures of South Florida and California; you can see it in the overdose numbers of Palm Beach County, the Bay Area, and L.A.; oddly enough, you can see it in rural areas like Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The problem is no longer in our back yards… it’s in our front rooms sitting on the couch kicking its feet up. We can neither clean up around it nor burn the house down; the only solution is to work with the problem and fix it so we can get it out of our house.

Both candidates this year have various ways they intend to achieve this end and make our country better. Only one will win and only one will succeed. We may not have been able to save Brenda, but there is still hope for her baby. Inform yourselves and vote.  After that, love your kids and inform them about the truth of the world around them, it may be ugly, but they need to know.

 

 

About StreetMotivation 905 Articles
Street Motivation is a Southern California based publication that was founded in 2005, and covers urban news, music, fashion, politics, and entertainment.

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