I was recently watching
a reality cop show which I occasionally do now as a retired person living my
golden years. The police were called out to a man down on a public sidewalk. As
is usually the case, it turned out to be a drug overdose. In this event, the
man was clinically dead with no pulse and no visible signs of life. Long story
short, the aid car came and treated the downed guy with Narcan, an opioid
reversal medicine, and he came around and was taken to the hospital for further
treatment.
The paramedic in his
report to the camera said this was yet another victim of the opioid
epidemic.
I beg to differ. This
was not another victim of any epidemic. If anything, this was a participant of
street level illegal drug use. Several police officers and aid units were
called to revive him. He literally owes his life to their quick response. He
wasn’t the victim of anything but his own stupidity.
I remember a few years
back when I heard Naomi Judd, of the famous singing act The Judds, herself the
victim of spousal abuse, say that if you are abused by your spouse, the first
time you are a victim, the second time you are a volunteer. This drug abuser
and the many like him are less a victim and more a volunteer. Nobody but he
himself stuck that needle in his arm and shot who knows what into his
bloodstream.
I’m sure he got the best
treatment available, all at taxpayer’s expense, and was released back to the
street where he probably has done it all over again and for all I know may
already be dead.
Concerning epidemics,
have you heard about the “homeless epidemic”? Thousands of people are living on
the streets in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as many other cities in
this country. The liberals call this an epidemic. I guess, since epidemic is a
scary word, it makes for good print.
Again it’s not an
epidemic at all. It is a choice of people who refuse to work, or otherwise seek
help for various addictions. It is people who beg for money to buy liquor or
drugs and who refuse to live a sober, clean life. Of course it also includes
mentally ill individuals who should be in institutions like the way they were
in years back. The liberals put an end to that. Now these poor, often helpless
people are left to their own devices to live and die on the streets of our big
cities. I hope the liberals are proud.
I know the left likes to
call a lot of human conditions illnesses. Like alcoholism for example. Addicts
are addicts, period. Whether it’s liquor, drugs, or cigarettes, it’s not a
disease. It is a choice.
The current fad now
seems to be to blame the manufacturer of drugs for their overuse. That’s a lot
like blaming the tobacco farmer for cigarette addiction, or gun makers for
misuse of their product. We don’t blame car makers for their production of cars,
even the cars that go from zero to eighty in six seconds. They are praised for
their ingenuity.
The hard reality is that
people who overuse, or stick needles in their arms, or drink to excess, or take
perfectly legal weapons and commit crimes with them are perpetrators, not
victims. They don’t have a disease and this is not an epidemic.
I understand that some
unscrupulous medical people over prescribe but ultimately we are responsible
for ourselves. We cannot keep blaming someone else or something else for our
choices. We light our own cigarettes. We drink from our own bottle. And we
stick needles into our own arms without pressure from anyone else.
What we need now is an
epidemic of personal responsibility.
Ron Scarbro, November
2019