Insys Therapeutics Inc. (fka INSYQ)

[terry hallinan]

Wherefore the opioid crisis?

In the case of opioids, the treatment options include two medications, methadone and buprenorphine, that both have a well-documented record of helping stabilize users. Yet these treatments remain in pitifully short supply, particularly in rural areas that have been especially hard hit by the epidemic. Since methadone and buprenorphine (marketed under the name Suboxone) are both opioid-based, they are frequently dismissed as just another form of addiction, but this is misguided,

[tell me about it.

for both reduce the craving for drugs and the symptoms of withdrawal and so help the drug-dependent function normally.

That making such treatment more accessible could help stanch the current epidemic is clear from the nation’s experience with an earlier one—the heroin wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1971, President Richard Nixon (of all people)—intent on combating the crime associated with drugs—set up a special drug-abuse prevention office in the White House and authorized its director, Dr. Jerome Jaffe, to make methadone (and other forms of treatment) widely available. Clinics were quickly established across the country, and within 18 months almost everyone seeking treatment could find it. Both heroin use and the crime related to it sharply declined.

Unfortunately, during his 1972 reelection campaign, Nixon—wanting to look tough on crime and drugs—began shifting federal attention away from treatment to law enforcement and incarceration.....

And thus the opioid crisis.

I have been in an opium den in Bangkok and it looks and feels as bad as the pictures but the addiction and death rate is quite modest compared to that from alcohol and and tobacco.

Is there then a chance for Insys' opioid drugs to save lives as well as easing final agonies?

- Some, I guess, in today's gruesome casualty list from the mindless Drug War battlefield.

Best hope for INSY remains medicinal cannabinoids.

JMO

Best, Terry