Strange how a thing can grow in one's consciousness over time. A few years back I encountered for the first time the notion of someone having become addicted to prescription pain-killers. This wasn't something that was ever heard of in my childhood or teenage years. I suppose it happened then, but it didn't make the news. I'm guessing I first came across the idea in relation to the problems of some celebrity or other. I know I found it puzzling at first but then saw a kind of grim logic being involved.
Then about a year ago I came across the term opioid, in relation to the notion of opioid addiction. I was vaguely aware that the problem was connected somehow to prescribed pain-killers but didn't quite grasp the nature of the connection. Now I know, following recent revelations concerning the number of deaths per day in the US as a result of overdoses of various opioids. And as a result of a particularly well-researched article in the on-line edition of the New Yorker I'm also now disturbingly aware of just how the whole problem/crisis/epidemic began.
The idea that we can blame a particular drugs company for all this somehow manages to be astonishing and all too predictable at one and the same time. Is there no end to human greed and folly?
(The answer is no, in case you're wondering.)
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