Mass Murders by Guns Vs. Opioid deaths

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That’s right, every year we lose 50% more young Americans to opioids than we lost in the entire Vietnam War. Opioids kill 64% more Americans per year than either car accidents or death by guns in general.

My heart goes out to the families of the innocent victims of the 2 mass murders that happened the weekend of August 3rd in Texas and Ohio. The media coverage, and the politicians have offered up their usual and customary lines about gun control, and it angers me because they see it as an opportunity to profit politically from this tragedy.

In all of 2019 there were 227 people killed in mass shootings in the USA – including the August, 2019 shootings. There is debate about what is considered a “mass killing”, but for the sake of this argument, let’s accept Wikipedia’s mass killing statistic. In 2017, 110,749 people either died of opioid overdoses or committed suicide because of opioids. That is up from 41,364 opioid “related” deaths in 2000 according to Healy Psychiatry, a well-known and respected psychiatric source. If you pro-rate this statistic to make a full year the mass murder “by guns” for 2019 would be 302 gun deaths (vs. 110,749 Opioid deaths).

Ponder that for a moment: 110,749 people died from opioids in 2007 and 302 died from gun inflicted mass murder.  We can assume that 2019 number would come in far higher than 110K deaths because of the unlimited fentanyl that is coming through the border. There is no grieving in the media and no righteous politicians vowing to fix the issue of opioids.

There is no debate that when people are gunned down in a mass shooting that they are completely innocent.  Unfortunately, when it comes to Opioids, there is plenty of debate as to whether opioid addiction is brought on by a weak character flaw or mental illness and it profoundly offends the grieving families and survivors of “the Opioid crisis”. No one plans to get addicted to opioids and die. There are no “mass overdoses” to attract the news cycle either. These young people die one at a time, alone, with no fanfare and no media caring. All it takes is one prescription to Opioids for a painful injury to get some people hooked. An ancillary issue with Opioid addiction is the costly peripheral problems: Families go broke trying to treat their addict in their family. Crime to feed the addiction, homelessness, mental illness and broken families that come with untreated Opioid addiction.

These 110,749 opioid deaths are all innocent victims. Victims of a drug industry that abused them for profit. Victims of a government that allowed the drug companies to sell these drugs via salespeople who gave doctors incentives to write more and more prescriptions. Victims of a medical profession that refused to acknowledge their complicity and police their own members. Victims of a media that preferred to ignore the problem rather than shine a light on national tragedy. The media of late has put itself on a pedestal as the guiding light of our democracy. It seems their bulb went out.

58,220 American soldiers are listed as having died in Vietnam. 130 Americans die every day from opioid overdose alone - not including suicide.  Over 70,000 young Americans have died so far this year (as of August 5^th, 2019) of Opioid overdose. That’s right, every year we lose 50% more young Americans to opioids than we lost in the entire Vietnam War.

The national discussion over gun control is a worthy discussion to have, and I support limited gun control laws that are strictly enforced. But it is important to remember that outlawing AK-15s will not stop innocent lives from being lost. A habitual criminal with numerous gun violations procured an AK-15 on the black market perpetrated in the recent police shooting in Philadelphia.

If we are serious about saving lives, we need to prioritize our efforts - and the opioid epidemic should be front and center. What is the remedy? Safer pain meds that are non-addictive. Free detox and rehab centers. Strict mandatory laws on drug dealers who peddle this poison. A change in the laws that currently prevent an unwilling addict from being forced into rehab. Free and readily available mental health therapy meant to keep addicts clean. This is the long and costly solution. The alternate is the “Switzerland method”. Making the addictive drugs readily available so that the addicts have a safe, doseable supply. This has proven to produce a population of functioning and semi-functioning drug addicts, without the crime and stigma of the addiction. Either way, we need to do something because we are losing too many young people to this horrible, man-made disease.

Written by Shep Fargotstein, Memphis, TN. - Mr. Fargotstein’s 35-year-old son, David, committed suicide on 07/05/2017 due to Opioid addiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019

https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/suicide/news/online/%7B0bffe859-64e4-4ce7-a68e-1fb03b0d1b66%7D/opioids-largely-fuel-increase-in-deaths-by-suicide-overdose-in-us

https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

What I Miss About You (David)

I Miss:

Our lunches at Soulfish

Your happiness when I bought the house on South Cox

Your excitement when I bought you a whole house full of furniture at IKEA

Your hugs

Having you at family dinners

Having you at family holidays

Your happiness to see me when I visited you when you lived out of town

Having my arms around my 2 sons at the same time

Seeing you and Sam and Molly together laughing and joking each other 

Hearing you and Sam and Molly talking about all the good times at Shady Fern Cove

You and Sam arguing and needling each other in the back seat of the car when you were little

Seeing you in the kitchen talking to Margaret at my house when I come home

Helping you set up your new life on South Cox

Miss canoeing with you and Sam

Miss us vacationing on the cruise

Miss celebrating your birthday in New Orleans

Seeing you happy

You when you were a little baby because you were so cute

Baby Dave sleeping in my arms

You loving on your little brother Sam.

Your annoying tapping on the table

Your odor of Marlboros and sweat

Seeing you and Molly late at night in the living room watching TV and talking

Buying you half gallon jars of hot sauce

Buying your favorite foods at Costco 

Seeing you cut the grass and planting trees around the house 

Your drawings

Having hope that you will one day you will give up your resistance to being conventional and will settle down in a job and get into a healthy relationship

Having hope that you will kick you addiction to drugs

I Wish:

I could have realized how desperate you really were in your life

You could have been honest with yourself

You could have been honest with me

You could have been honest with your mother

You could have been honest with Sam and Molly

You could have realized that you could have made it through the rehab

You could have believed in yourself

I had gotten to your house 5 minutes earlier

Lena had called me 10 minutes earlier and warned me about her concerns for you

I could have delivered you to Cumberland Heights the next day

I did not have to carry the pain of losing you to suicide

I did not have to carry the anger about this final, stupid act of yours

I did not have to see the pain in your mother, Sam and Molly

I wish I could un-remember the sheer panic when Margaret and I drove 100 MPH to your house while calling the EMTs.

I could un-see your body hanging on the door

I could un-see your body falling to the ground when I cut you down

I could un-hear the thud of your body hitting the ground when I cut you down.

I could permanently replace my anger with the empathy I have for you - when I think it all through

I could take back some of the things I said to you about the timetable to return home after rehab because I feel I may have overwhelmed you when you were mentally weak.

I would have picked up on some of your blank stares and – in hindsight – telling responses to my questions (David, where are your survival skills?) that should have clued me in on the possibility that you were suicidal.

I Hope:

That you are no longer in mental agony and in a peaceful place if there is an afterlife

That if there is a Heaven, you are with Aunt Gayle, Suva and Papa Max

That I can learn to live with the pain of your suicide knowing it will never go away.

That Kay can live a happy life with the pain of her first son committing suicide

That Molly and Sam will always remember you as a good big brother 

That Molly and Sam have a happy life, despite the loss of their big brother.

That if there is a heaven and you can hear me, know that I love you and forgive you.

That if you can hear me, know that I always was proud that you were my son. I may have seemed at time to be annoyed that you weren’t even trying to make it – but I was always proud that you were my son…..big keychain and all dangling from your pants.

I love you David, 

Dad

College Bribery Scandal Calls for Big Picture Reform of College Admissions AND College Sports Programs

A lot of people want the most recent college bribery fiasco to go away with a few high profile token scapegoats. After all, there are millions of people who enjoy college sports and there is an entire industry inside and outside the school where billions of dollars are at stake. For the sake of higher education in America the college sports industry needs to either be altered to the point where it is unrecognizable – or completely eliminated. It is a moral imperative that people are judged - not on the color of their skin, or their ability to jump higher or run faster - or that their families are so rich that they can buy their way into a college with a large donation, but purely on merit, period.

College sports is a profitable revenue stream for some schools with successful programs who have the advantage of rich donors who support their sports programs. The downside is that the vast majority of other colleges feel the need to compete by building costly and ever bigger stadiums and athletic facilities – while recruiting star athletes who either play one year and go pro (one and done), or play all 4 years, hardly ever attend classes, and either don’t graduate or are given a diploma without have the basic skills to read and write. There are exceptions to the above generality, but we all know this is the way it works.

Having been on the University of Kansas Parent Advisory board for 6 years, I have had an inside look at the admissions process - and the issues that ever bigger Universities are facing every day. I contend that the mismanagement of colleges and Universities today are the reason why college tuition is too high, why students are burdened with too much debt, and why students are graduating with degrees that are worthless in today’s society. The net effect is that we now have generations of ex-students who are saddled with the burden of a huge student debt, own worthless degrees, have low-paying jobs - and can’t afford to buy a home.

The 1960’s and 1970’s saw a demographic explosion of baby boomers and Colleges and Universities went on a building spree to house all the new students and of course, they had to hire professors to teach them. The building and hiring boom never stopped and now most of the professors are tenured, even though the demographics have changed and there are less qualified students. So the schools lower their admission standards by focusing on non-STEM courses and mass produce phycology, literature and English graduates who find out after graduation they can’t find a job in their “field”. I love the Liberal Arts but let’s not fool ourselves about reality.

College sports will not EVER be at the level of play we see today if admissions was merit based on academics. That’s OK. College baseball is a prime example of what ALL college sports should look like in the future. If an 18 year old baseball player is especially talented, a pro team will pick him up out of high school and put him on a AA or AAA farm team to develop his talent. The kid is making a decent living and if he is good enough he can enter the pros easily. The professional baseball teams are spending their money to develop his talent. In College basketball, the colleges are giving admission to people who obviously aren’t academically fit to attend, yet they get free tuition, etc. In return, the University Coach makes Millions a year, the University makes Millions and the average student athlete never makes one dollar, never goes pro,  gets injured and never plays - or ends up either quitting college before graduating or graduates without the basic skills needed to land a job. Does that sound fair to anyone?

Let the NFL, NBA and MLB run minor leagues for exceptional young athletes. The leagues could even run academic courses alongside the training in some manner, but it will be on their dime, not the tax paying public or parents who are paying college tuition. This college bribery fiasco has been going on for a long time, and everyone knew it. But if Colleges and Universities are honest about cleaning up their act as institutions, they need to focus on STEM sciences, reducing costs and doing away with high dollar college sport programs.