Ann Arbor News: Escalate the War on Drugs
Today’s Ann Arbor News runs an unbelievably wrongheaded editorial arguing that the War on Drugs needs to extend further — into the area of prescription drug abuse, which they claim that the current War “scarcely touches.” Never mind that the DEA is already waging what many have called “a war on doctors” that has left many patients in chronic pain unable to get the medication they need. (As chronicled here in Reason and in Radley Balko’s blog The Agitator.)
UPDATE: The News claims that prescription drug abusers “now account for 30 percent of emergency room deaths.” But as Anna points out in the comments here, the figure is actually 30 percent of drug-related emergency room deaths. According to this Reuters story on the NIH site, “controlled [prescription] drugs were implicated in almost 30 percent of drug-related emergency room deaths,” which doesn’t even imply that all of these deaths were caused by abuse; some of them could have been the result of accidental overdose (or suicide, which is arguably not what the drug warriors mean by “abuse.”) We hope the News will be running a correction.
I’m sure I’ve related this multiple times, but it’s my anecode, damnit.
I had to go to UHS 6 times (regular doctor twice) before they bothered giving me anything for pain that made it damned near impossible to study at times, and probably knocked 20 points off of a final (neck hurt too bad to lean over the paper and write).
Well, they did give me barely-stronger-than OTC stuff, and muscle relaxers that knocked me out for 12 hours straight (take ‘em 3 times a day!).
Then there was the nurse, who after hearing that the 4 or 5 scripts I had gotten did absolutely nothing for the pain, said: “well, nothing will get rid of the pain except narcotics”, then prescribed me that muscle relaxer. That didn’t work. Again.
(I was given exercises instead of medicine that would’ve worked, but I hurt too badly to do the exercises. Ahh logic.)
… thanks, Ann Arbor Paper. Thanks.
posted by Anonymous on July 12th, 2005 at 1:12 pmThe problem with the Ann Arbor News is that it overcommits. It really has all it can handle with its recipes and comics.
posted by Anna on July 12th, 2005 at 1:48 pm“The costs of the abuse are huge - certainly to users, who now account for 30 percent of emergency room deaths.”
I’d like to know how that statistic was cooked. I can’t believe it.
posted by Jeff on July 12th, 2005 at 1:59 pmThat was my reaction, too. Given the number of reasons people who enter the emergency room, 1/3 seems highly suspicious (I might believe 3%, but even that sounds high since they are talking about *prescription* drug abusers).
posted by Anna on July 12th, 2005 at 2:23 pmOkay, I did a little digging and it is really that 30 percent of DRUG-RELATED deaths that occur in emergency rooms are the result of controlled prescription substances. Kidding aside, AA News should be ashamed.
posted by Anna on July 12th, 2005 at 2:29 pmyep. Wow, good work spotting that.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on July 12th, 2005 at 2:33 pmThis is a serious question, AAIO (in your capacity as former journalism student): is what they did in that editorial otherwise considered within the bounds of good journalistic practice? They took a bunch of stats from an AP story, most verbatim (not to mention the one that was just plain wrong) and toped it off with a quote they clearly weren’t there to hear, “all-fronts effort” together with what the AP article said verbatim “…is needed to reverse the trend” (pops up verbatim in every article turned up in google searches using the terms “all-fronts effort” and “Joseph Califano”). Is the lifting of quotes and stats from other articles (not in the editor’s own paper) common practice for editorials?
posted by Anna on July 12th, 2005 at 2:55 pmI would assert, inaccurately, that 95% of *all* deaths happen as a result of prescription drug overdoses.
posted by Real Big on July 12th, 2005 at 2:56 pmIn a news story, you’re definitely supposed to say “Joseph Califano told the AP” or something. I would imagine the standards are the same for an editorial. In this case, I think the phrase is from a report he wrote. Taking a whole bunch of information from an article without citing it is considered bad too. “Needed to reverse the trend”…definitely not good, but it’s not really the most original phrase in the first place. I was never actually a reporter, so I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this stuff, though.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on July 12th, 2005 at 3:05 pmReal Big, you’re way off; it’s more like 82% of perscription drug overdoses happen as a result of death.
posted by Ann Arbor Expat on July 12th, 2005 at 3:18 pmI’d be nailed to the wall for that sort of sloppiness a journal article, but I guess maybe the standard is different for editorials, since they’re opinion.
posted by Anna on July 12th, 2005 at 3:22 pmAnna: No, if you worked for a real paper and turned this in as an opinion column, you’d be nailed to the wall. The differences are that the Ann Arbor News isn’t a real paper, and that the editorial board (when speaking through the house organ) really doesn’t have anyone to nail them save the publisher, and if the publisher agrees with your ideology, there’s no check on what you write.
posted by js on July 12th, 2005 at 4:28 pmActually, I can state with absolute certainty that all deaths (human), regardless of location, are due to failure of the heart, lungs, and/or brain (depending on strictness of definition). In fact, the mortality rate for life in general is also 100%*.
*Rounded to the nearest whole percentage point.
posted by JCP2 on July 12th, 2005 at 4:35 pmI guess if they want their poster child for how soft we are on this, they need to look no further than the radio dial. He got what, a month in rehab and is back to blathering his mouth about whatever? If he were doing coke, he’d be in jail for a long time.
Although, I think a casualty of the drug war is that doctors have to more closely monitor who they give prescription drugs to.
posted by Kozzie on July 12th, 2005 at 8:58 pmOne other thing about the phrase “involved in emergency room deaths” — “involved” means “metioned by the patient or his family.”
So if I come to the hospital via a car accident, and my wife tells the doctors I took an Adderall three days ago off-label to help me study for an exam, that counts as a prescription drug “involved” in an emergency room incident.
The drug doesn’t actually have to have anything to do with why you’re in the emergency room.
posted by Radley Balko on July 13th, 2005 at 6:28 amthanks for the clarification, Radley. Is there a difference between “implicated” and “involved”?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on July 13th, 2005 at 12:17 pmHey, it didn’t look like the AA News printed a correction (at least in the online edition). Perhaps it’s time for our favorite disatisfied AA resident to write a letter to the editor?
posted by Anna on July 13th, 2005 at 12:19 pmWell, they did own up to the crucial error of getting the address of a Dexter school wrong.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on July 13th, 2005 at 2:51 pmOh, c’mon. It’s not their fault that they were confused; they were high as hell at the time.
posted by js on July 14th, 2005 at 12:59 pmYah good luck on that trying to get them to acknowledge a gross error thing, years ago, in a 1/2 page article they stated my Mother commited suicide and vaguely inferred that my father assisted. It was gross negligence in fact checking and in another day and age would have been lucratively actionable. They offered us a deeply buried one line retraction.
posted by stella on July 14th, 2005 at 6:57 pmann arbor news is overrated
posted by peter honeyman on July 14th, 2005 at 11:36 pm