EPIDEMICS EPIDEMICS

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