President Obama Coming to Atlanta March 29
President Barack Obama will hold a town hall at the National Prescription Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit at the Westin hotel downtown on March 29. A time for the town hall has not been set.
President Barack Obama announced March 22, that he will speak at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, March 29. This follows his visit last year to West Virginia, where he announced a number of new public and private sector actions to address the epidemic, including a Presidential Memorandum on prescriber training and opioid use disorder treatment.
As part of these efforts, on March 15 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new recommendations for prescribing opioid medications for chronic pain to help primary care providers — who account for prescribing nearly half of all opioid prescriptions — ensure the safest and most effective treatment for their patients.
President Obama will address Summit attendees during a General Session Town Hall, time to be announced.
The President has made clear that addressing this epidemic is a priority for his Administration and put forward a request earlier this year for $1.1 billion in new funding-most of which would go directly to States – to ensure that every American who wants treatment can get the help they need.
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Is addiction a disease or a choice ? The government and sellers of insurance call it a brain disease. Psychiatrists and Docs straddle the fence depending on where their bread is buttered.
Rehab is to get people to make the right choice. Should government pay for bad lifestyle addictions or choices or should that part of insurance coverage be optional at a cost ?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90688&page=1
PS for those getting ready to freak – how about an opt out discount on specified bad lifestyle choices or addictions ?
Addiction is a disease. Treating it like some moral failure ignores how addictive substances erode people’s ability to make moral choices.
Describing addition as a choice is just an error. Our brains rely on neurochemical activities to make decisions. Drugs interfere with the physical structure of the brain. Some people happen to have structures that can defend against addiction better than others, to throw it off or manage it. But to lay addiction on someone as a “lifestyle choice” is like blaming people for drowning instead of trying to throw a life preserver.
Fortunately, the world’s view of this is moving away from yours.
I read the article and don’t agree, I agree the world is moving that way as it is easier to blame something else or someone else pay. I’ll take my chances for a reduction in insurance, some now surcharge for obesity or smoking, add for drugs and alcohol.
Throwing a life preserver is pointing them to AA.
My brother is a binge alcoholic. He started to drink heavily as a form of self medication for depression and anxiety at the age of 16. He can be sober for years and then be blackout drunk for months.
He went to AA the first time at 21. He credits the programs belief in a higher power and believing in faith as his reason for becoming an atheist. God could no more stop him from drinking then any “you choose to be a drunk” lecture you or I, or anyone can give him. We could never afford rehab so he never went, even if we could get him to go. He is 44, and has been sober currently for almost 3 years this time. He has gone as long as 5 years without a drink and then he just wakes up one day and slams down a bottle of Goldslogger for no reason or trigger we can figure out .
My brother is one of the most ornery stubborn and strong willed individuals I have ever known. To call it a lifestyle is insulting. He craves alcohol. He told me when it’s bad, the craving is being like a starving man needing to have a piece of food. Your body keeps telling you to “eat/drink” over and over, and every hour of every day he has to tell his body to keep starving. At some point you are so hungry that you ‘have to’ take that drink. You don’t care what the consequences are, you just need to take that drink if only to “just shut the f*****g craving up” to have some quiet in your own thoughts.
Addition is a disease.
I came to my opinion not from a stone heart but a broken heart of relatives and friends that gave excuses, the docs medicated them to zombies and suicidal, the families gave them money and ignored them sleeping on the sofa at weddings and family events. Few recovered but those that did, choose to over the enablers.
I understand your heart ache. An addict does not recover in an isolated bubble. It takes incentives, and it takes having the tools and the resources to remain sober. As I mentioned, we could not afford rehab, but his current insurance does cover addiction counseling and his non addictive anti depressant.
It is an emotional mess and only a bit less with a good hearted drunk or addict. My experiences, unfortunately, have been horrendous and destructive. Not all my gut wrenching stories or issues with prescribed psycho drugs will convince most of the close victims or Pity partiers that about the only outside help that has a chance is an intervention with tough love terms. It is their choice.
My “favorite” response from a bruised wife and cowering child was we are going to stand by him until he finds Jesus. I now wished she would have helped him meet Jesus.
The child exceeded all the depravity his father taught him.
…because that guy wants to live in the alley on some cardboard?
Addiction… not Addition.