BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2016) — It’s not the kind of news you’ll hear about in the Feel Good Fakery & Fiction Department that pumps out press releases to the local Mainstream Media and provides talking points to the city’s “all-is-good-and-getting-better” political “leaders.” What news? Congratulations, Pittsfield, for ranking in the Top 5 nationally in a life-defining category.

Yes, bedraggled citizens, residents, and taxpayers, your city ranks #5 in the country for abuse of prescriptive opioids. In short, Pittsfield’s “New Wave” of thrill seekers are popping pills faster than a debutante doing breath mints on her first date, shooting up more than Steph Curry, and snorting more than a raging bull.

Seventeen of the top 25 drug-abuse centers are located in the South, primarily in rural locations. Pittsfield, last we checked, sat in the citified Northeast. This tells everything you need to know about the quality of life in this once-great city.

The Top 5 in the nation for opioid drug abuse:

1. Emira, NY
2. Flagstaff, AZ
3. Enid, OK
4. Wilmington, NC
5. Pittsfield, MA

Abuse of prescription drugs kills more than 16,000 people each year (source: Castlight Health.  http://www.castlighthealth.com/typ/the-opioid-crisis/).

The stock response of most officials is to call for more rehab, treatment centers, meth clinics, hospital beds, and programs. The easier way to say that is the call for more public money to be thrown away (rehad doesn’t work) on the so-called drug pandemic.

THE PLANET doesn’t doubt that drug use is rising. Nonetheless, we don’t buy the response of public officials, who are as addicted to rehab as Linsday Lohan. They have bought into the psychobabble of the drug treatment industry that has grown wealthy peddling “treatments” that don’t work. If they did work, addicts wouldn’t be in rehab over and over again. A successful treatment would show an unbroken record of one-and-done. That, however, would greatly reduce the profit margins of treatment centers.

These centers can be high-end, such as Promises Treatment Centers at a cost of $48,000 a month,or more plebian, such as Minnesota’s Hazelden Center, one of the world’s largest, where “a typical 28-day stay costs $26,000” (source: The Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2010).

These centers reward their investors with huge profits. As with all businesses, the idea is to grow that profitability. Drug treatment can only do that by increasing the number of addicts and making sure of repeat business.

23 million Addicts, or about 10% of America

According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, there are more than 23 million drugs addicts in America (age 12 and older). Of these, a little less than 11% (2.5 million) received care at a rehab center (2012). This leaves a giant market of new customers for the predatory industry to tap. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates $35 billion in untapped addicts. That’s a mighty tempting target.

The drug treatment industry lobbies politicians relentlessly. Why do you think there are mandates that take away a community’s rights to say no to drug treatment facilities, or have you forgotten Pittsfield’s battle over the methadone clinic in downtown? The rehab industry also has pushed to alter local law. Treatment centers can be adapted to fit into neighborhoods, for example, the private single-home residence that becomes a “sober living home.” Pittsfield has a large number of such “residences,” which vanish from the tax rolls.

The drug treatment industry has also successfully lobbied to implement new federal and state laws that put payments for drug addiction on the same treatment footing as true medical illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. Moreover, according to Forbes magazine online (April 27, 2015), there is “[a]lmost no federal, state[,] or municipal oversight for credentials or treatment pricing at such facilities.

Yes, Big Drugs has brainwashed the public to believe that taking a drug to the point of addiction is a “disease.” It is no such thing, of course. Drug use involves a free-will choice to engage in dangerous behavior. Forbes again: “The AMA first defined alcoholism as an illness (1956) then a disease (1966), but there’s little scientific evidence to support a disease diagnosis.”

Drug rehab businesses often go the “non-profit” route. This tax dodge allows enormous profits for the owners. With Pittsfield’s growing drug problem, it might be a business for you to consider. Check this out: How to Start a Drug Rehab Business – Startup Business

www.startupbizhub.com/how-to-start-a-drug–rehab-business.htm‎

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Perhaps the best treatment might no treatment at all. If someone wants to kick a drug, be it alcohol, heroin, meth, or anything else, let them grow up, quit playing a childish (but often fatal) game, and make the adult decision to do it.

Drug addiction is a voluntary behavior. The hordes of drug users in Pittsfield are choosing to do partake. There’s nothing in the social contract that says we owe them special privileges.

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“Hope is the opposite of fear” — St. Francis de Sales.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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