Bloomberg blames weed for the opioid crisis and clearly doesn’t understand the bigger issue.

Weed is currently legal in 43 states, and in 10 of those states residents are free to use it recreationally. Those states include Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the nations capital, Washington D.C. As of 2016 the top states with the most opioid related deaths include West Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Maryland, Washington D.C., Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut, and Kentucky. Meanwhile California, the first state to ever legalize marijuana has one of the lowest numbers among all 50 states. According to the latest data from the CDC there has been a decrease in the number of fatal overdoses within the last year. Although there is no immediate explanation as to why this decrease occurred, it may have to do with recent government initiatives. Recently the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg claimed that there is a correlation between the opioid crisis and the increasing legalization of marijuana. Bloomberg is clearly ignorant to the more relevant issues that are actually responsible for the opioid crisis, yet he’s quick to say that the legalization of a drug that actually helps people “is perhaps stupidest thing anybody has ever done.” Taking a closer look at this supposed correlation may help with understanding why marijuana is defined as a gateway drug, and what possible initiatives could’ve led to the recent decrease in opioid overdoses.

During the early nineties there was an increased pressure to treat chronic pain. The American Pain Society even named pain as the fifth vital sign. It only continued to grow as a concern while pharmaceutical companies continued to profit off of it by selling opioids. However, if you were prescribed opioids and lost your job you’d no longer be able to afford them, so the easiest alternative would be heroin. Many coal miners suffered this because of the legitimate health issues they suffered from their occupation and then the fact that they were losing their jobs due to the growth of sustainable energy. Veterans and former athletes were also susceptible to this epidemic. Pain is no longer seen as the fifth vital sign since there isn’t a way to objectively measure it. There are a variety of disagreeing statistics concerning how much pain Americans are in mostly because they are all being judged by differing subjective standards. The subjectivity of defining pain may also have to do with culture since the USA stands as the most pained country in the world, according to Mona Chalabi, the data expert on Netflix’s The Fix. She also went on to point out that countries culturally similar to the U.S. like the UK and Australia also have some of the highest rates of opioid abuse. While there isn’t any identifiable reason for why the people of these countries suffer so much pain, it also can’t be ignored.

Opioids work by attaching to your bodies nerve cells and blocking the pain signals. This fact was enough to get medical boards to back the over prescription of opioids to deal with pain, and even encourage the punishment of doctors who weren’t taking pain as seriously as they should. It wasn’t until 2007 that the pharmaceutical companies plead guilty to falsely advertising their opioids as less addictive. It works great against short term pain, yet it only takes 5 days to become addicted so users who suffer from chronic pain are bound to become addicted to it. The doctors who are prescribing opioids should understand this better than anyone and have even been warned against it repeatedly by the FDA, still they continue to do it. An analysis done by CNN/Harvard found that 54% of doctors who prescribed opioids, in 2014 and 2015, received payments from companies that produce opioids. Health Insurance companies share in the responsibility of the epidemic because they failed to apply certain rules that would’ve helped prevent the crisis. An Ex-DEA employee exposed the entire industries involvement in aiding the spread of the opioid epidemic in a 60-Minutes interview. He blamed everyone from the pharmacies to our very government, because they all saw the numbers and instead of wondering why such small populations needed so much, they just fulfilled the order. In addition to that since the painkillers were made less expensive, it may be much easier for insurance companies to ignore the amounts people were getting prescribed than paying for procedures that could actually end the pain.

The health industries involvement in the opioid crisis is clear to anyone who understands the facts. As a matter of fact the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was responsible for the research that revealed the health insurance companies practices responsible for permitting the over prescription of opioids, yet Bloomberg himself would rather blame marijuana.

Alcohol is currently the leading gateway drug and it’s far more harmful for the body, yet his problem is with Marijuana. “Marijuana legalization initiatives swept the US last year”, according to an article from Business Insider. There’s been a recent decline in overdose rates and recent government initiatives may be responsible, especially the ones involving the decriminalization of marijuana. Medicinal Marijuana has been known to help alleviate the pain associated with cancer, epilepsy, PTSD, seizures, and many other conditions. We have a society that’s experiencing abnormal amounts of pain, that also shares that pain with other culturally. 43 states legalized medicinal marijuana because they understand that it can do a lot more good than bad, and California, the first state to legalize it 23 years ago, has done such a good job applying it’s use that it has some of the lowest overdose rates in the U.S.

Bloomberg is considering running for president in 2020, if he’s considering being a leader for this country he should have a full understanding of what causes issues for the people of this country. He’d rather call things stupid and oppose national health plans than propose solutions. Despite speculating the cause of the opioid crisis, how would he solve the problem that caused it? How would he solve the problem with pain?

Pain is still a national problem and the opioid crisis is just proof. Pain needs to be dealt with someway and Portugal has decided to treat their problem by providing people with mental health instead of legal consequences. Addiction is a disease and a judge isn’t exactly qualified to treat people with diseases. In the same way Bloomberg isn’t exactly qualified to speak on national epidemics.