The Knowlership Blog

Three months after declaring the opioid crisis a national emergency , President Trump declared during his first State of the Union that the United States would beat the epidemic by getting “much tougher on drug dealers and pushers.” Such combative rhetoric draws attention away from the real narrative behind America’s biggest drug epidemic: bad government policy catering to special interests. The Rise and Fall of OxyContin Prior to the 1990s, doctors generally viewed opioids as a last resort due to their addictive properties . Two medical perspectives shifted . First, a 1992 federal report concluded that fear of opioid addiction prevented too many patients from receiving the pain relief they needed. Around the same time, medical professionals began to accept chronic pain as a legitimate reason for treatment, with or without the presence of other symptoms. The resulting medical paradigm shift led to a spike in the demand for painkillers, and pharmaceutical companies raced to ...

As part of the deal ending January’s government shutdown, Congress has until February 8th to strike a deal on immigration. Hanging in the balance are the fates of nearly 700,000 young people now at risk of deportation after the Trump administration announced the phasing out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) last fall. In his State of the Union Address on January 30, Donald Trump reiterated his plan to grant assistance if his long-promised border wall receives funding. Democrats insist on unconditional relief. Known as “Dreamers,” these immigrants are too important for Congress to relegate them to political pawns. Instead, they should regain legal status with a path to citizenship. The Obama administration created DACA in 2012 to buy time for some undocumented immigrants while Congress developed comprehensive immigration reform. Under certain conditions, DACA allowed people who illegally entered the country as children to receive official documentation...