The rise in the death rates from drugs among men since 2001 means that 400,000 more male lives have been lost. That’s about the same number of men the U.S. lost in WW II. The neglect of men’s health is now, I’m afraid, a scandal. This and much more with Scott G. here
Really? You seriously are comparing 3 years of war with 23 years and think that's useful comparison? You undercut your point by doing so. I would also like to know if the death rate from drug use is unproportionally impacting men or have those numbers increased for all? Not to minimize the issue with young men, but I like things to be true and rational. That helps in accurately diagnosing the problem and hopefully in coming up with solutions. The disparity between the opportunity previous generations had compared to today's youth's opportunities is pretty huge. The older generations are holding onto weatlh in such a way that it's easy for youth to become discouraged and more apt to abuse drugs....which our own country has allowed. Why are pharmeceutical companies allowed to air TV ads? It's disgusting. Yes, young men are struggling, but this dial it down to get to the actual issue.
The heart of it is a Bad Drugs problem. Most of the overdoses of the last 10 years are due to street fentanyl, mostly in the form of counterfeit opioid pills. Most of the casualties were addicts who had got hooked on Oxy back in the 1990s-2000s when it was easy to find a State with loose regs (some of them, like Florida, were ridiculous), hop State borders with a prescription (or without one), doctor shop, find a pill mill and buy mass quantities for a habit and/or the diversion market to funnel it into the high schools.
The whole thing kicked off in the mid-1990s, when Purdue pharma salespeople were doing all the "drug education" for doctors who hadn't had any in medical school, telling them it was okay to prescribe Oxy for every little back sprain. Typical "time release" dose was 40mg- 8 times as much as 5mg Percodan that was the same drug. All anyone had to do was chew the pill and boom, better than street heroin. Powerful enough that overdoses from Oxy outpaced heroin by the end of the 2000s. So the Feds cracked down on the pill mills, and now most every state is signed up to a central Federal database, which should have been policy 25 years before it happened. But the rapid cutoff of legit macufactured pills without any alternatives available led the addicts to the street heroin market, which rapidly turned into the fentanyl market, because this is the age of designer drugs. And ever since fentanyl, we've had a REAL drug problem. 40 times the annual death toll, compared to heroin in the 1990s. 7 times the annual death toll from Oxycontin and the other pills in the early 2000s.
Nowadays the surveys show that teenagers are scared off of opioids, because almost all of them are aware of the counterfeit problem and the fentanyl contamination problem that affects other drugs. New users of opioids are down by 2/3- but the cartels have started to put it into every drug that passes through their hands, and it's gotten dirt cheap https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/price-of-illicit-fentanyl-drops-to-dangerously-cheap-in-twin-cities-metro/
At a dollar a pill, some suckers will try that shit. It's an introductory offer.
We need a legal opioid option, like opium cough medicine, quantity and ID controlled at each outlet. We have the technology to do it: I've had my ID copied when purchasing a 6-pack of beer, I've bought booze from stores with quantity limits. We can do the same thing for people buying a bottle of liquid suspension of opium. Also, tightly regulated physician prescribed opioid maintenance for the people with the heaviest habits. The rest of the opioids should remain illegal, but the criminal marketplace will shrink drastically, and that's the most important thing. Not a perfect solution, but it would work a lot better than most people think.
Straight talk: I'm tired of hearing the problems of our catastrophic Drug War policy diverted into another issue. Drug and alcohol consumption is a situation where men are just plain more reckless than women: males start underage more often, they experiment more widely, they take more dangerous drugs, they combine them together more, they care less about the source, they take them in greater quantities, they get addicted more often than females. As a result, men die from overdoses 2-3 times as often as women. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/men-died-overdose-2-3-times-greater-rate-women-us-2020-2021
It isn't Misandry. It's Us, males. XYs. Most of drug addiction is a side effect of Type-R personality, which has a heavily male bias. Drugs are the wrong place to push limits and take risks, because there's no effort involved, and hence none of the natural checks and brakes that are part of most other type-R challenges. The reward comes all at once, bypassing any authentic benefit from testing ones limits. Men like to find an edge to be tested with, but drugs are deceptive like nothing else. It's like testing how deep you can sink in quicksand. And as Stupid Guy Tricks go, playing with drugs that can swallow you whole seems to have an enduring popularity.
I'm recommending liberalizing the laws on a dilute opium formulations because nothing else is going to ensure regulated product safety and starve the money supply of the criminal business, which has been booming for half a century. That's the only reason. I'm advocating it because I throw up my hands. If some people want to get high on opioids, let them have it. I'm tired of seeing Criminal Culture running a controlling interest in the music lyrics, the fashions, the slang, the cynicism, the nihilism, the conspicuous consumption materialism, the alienation, the social divides. The guns, the violence, the climate of lawlessness that's resulted from over-policing peoples personal decisions. We know that some of those decisions are reckless per se, when it comes to drug use.. The lawlessness of criminalization makes the hazards incomparably worse.
Alcohol Prohibition repeal stopped the 14-year process of the gangsterfication of America- for a while. Then it came back worse with Other Prohibited Drugs, 30-odd years later. No conspiracy, just the return of the repressed. And this society has been in denial about it ever since. A time period four times as long as the duration of Alcohol Prohibition, with its 14-year span of the Roaring 20s, Jay Gatsby, the introduction of coed college students to binge drinking. The 1920s was the era that invented the drive-by shooting. How much worse is the decadence and corruption now than it was then- I dunno, 50 times worse, 100 times worse?
But, sure, go on. Blame it on neglected men, not getting our egos stroked enough, dying "deaths of despair." The despair is real. But it's an end stage of addiction, a ride that felt so carefree at the outset. So carefree that few of the addicts even read so much as a single piece of paper outlining the hazards. Especially not the fine print. Most of the illegal drug users I know just jumped in head first, beginning as teenagers. Most of them have been men. Nobody pushed them.
I think if we really want to examine opiate use and deaths of despair we should use a wider lens before we broaden opiate use-I suspect many of these deaths are for people that were first prescribed opiates. If a man works in a position where he can temporarily (or permanently) become disabled, there are financial gains. Federal tax, payroll taxes, many state's taxes are not removed from a disability check, health insurance is provided and often opiates are prescribed. With this smaller payment, the family keeps much more money, qualifies for scholarships at parochial grade and high schools, YMCA memberships, federal Pell grants at college, reduced price/free lunch at school and has a parent at home to mind the children. Now, the disabled man would lose so much financially if he went back to work and he becomes an addict. So many rehabs, social workers, pharmacists and doctors are making money, this will never stop. It will not take long before the addiction destroys what remains of the family.
I had children in the Intensive Care Nursery. They eventually graduated to the "angry baby room". These are the babies born addicted to opiates because an entire system supports Mom's drug use throughout pregnancy (with methadone). Sometimes these newborns cannot be fed, they are so distraught and screaming with the withdrawal discomfort. An army of supports are in place making sure mom never feels any discomfort for her opiate use and can dine at restaurants with special coupons and sleep in a comfortable bed while her newborn goes through withdrawals. No person should suggest allowing opiate use until they have heard these babies and watched the vultures making a living off of allowing this or worse, promoting it. Opiates should be available by IV ONLY, in a hospital or for the terminally ill. People are earning a living off destroying the lives of others.
"I had children in the Intensive Care Nursery. They eventually graduated to the "angry baby room". These are the babies born addicted to opiates because an entire system supports Mom's drug use throughout pregnancy (with methadone). Sometimes these newborns cannot be fed, they are so distraught and screaming with the withdrawal discomfort. An army of supports are in place making sure mom never feels any discomfort for her opiate use and can dine at restaurants with special coupons and sleep in a comfortable bed while her newborn goes through withdrawals. No person should suggest allowing opiate use until they have heard these babies and watched the vultures making a living off of allowing this or worse, promoting it.
I realize that the babies of drug-addicted mothers go into withdrawal. Were any of the drug-addicted mothers in your anecdote addicted to legally prescribed opioids that they had received from their physician? Dose keeping opioids illegal interfere with the pregnancies of the addicts? Dose it interfere with their easy access to impure, illicit, and possibly lethal fentanyl counterfeit pills?
"Opiates should be available by IV ONLY, in a hospital or for the terminally ill. People are earning a living off destroying the lives of others.""
According to this link, 6 of the top 10 prescription pain medications are opioids. It's been that way as long as opioids and opiates have been around. Many millions of Americans are prescribed opioids every year. Millions take them for chronic pain management. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2788755
Maybe some percentage of those millions of people are malingering, I don't know. There were probably malingering opioid addicts in the 19th century, too. And the 18th century, before that. And so on. Civilization can survive a small percentage of habitual opioid users. What's caused the breakdown of society is handing the market over to a criminal monopoly.
I know exactly what you're saying about OSHA related disability and SSDI eligibility, and that it exists as a problem and that there's a temptation for people working low-paid jobs to turn it into a long-term welfare benefit that sometimes has included being addicted. But I'd bet that it's a lot harder to get prescribed opioids from most occupational health doctors any more. The Feds began cracking down around 2014. The first thing to do was shut the quantity window. And doctors- everywhere are stingy with opioids any more, sometimes very stingy. That's the sort of overcompensation rebound that happens when the legal prescription trade in a DEA Schedule II substance--supposedly Federally regulated--is left to the separate states to do the oversight for 20 years, with no connection to a centralized Federal database. Well, there is one now, and almost all of the states have signed on to it--but in the 1990s, there was no Federal oversight of accountability for physician prescriptions. And states with regs like Florida or Ohio were just full of script docs and pill mills.
But that's over now. And many of the addicts who started out on legally manufactured product have been forced into the street market, which is run by a different breed of career criminal than scrip docs. That why all the fentanyl deaths, read the linked chart.
you make some interesting points. I watched the Hulu fictional show Dopesick, but it was extremely illuminating about Perdue Pharmacutical and the opiod crisis AND not only the failure of our govt. to limit it, but our Govts. complicity by allowing Govt. officials to make decisions that benefit these companies and then go to work for them for huge salaries. Corporations are running our country, plain and simple. Both Dems and Repubs cater to corporations. The CIA and all of the illegal acts they've done in foreign countries were all about creating opportunities for american corporations. And, they want the american public to be dumb, drugged, and divided. That way they get to continue the status quo...which is corporations and their investors making bank while most americans struggle.
I've read the book Dopesick, which is nonfiction, not fiction.. That has kept me from wanting to watch the series that was made from it. I've read well over a hundred books on the subject of illegal drugs, and that's the one book that had me staring at the ceiling all night after I finished it.
You're raised some really good points. I'll be writing more on them when time allows.
I agree. The book is almost always better than the movie:. Always better in the case of nonfiction.
But I'll warn you in advance: Dopesick is not a book to be enjoyed. It was riveting reading. I picked it up in the New Book selection at the library, started reading it there, checked it out and took it home, and did not stop reading it until the end. But it's a haunting book, and not a fun read at all.
The reason an office of women’s health was needed was that virtually all medical research had been done on men. You may be too young to remember (I’m 71), but the nation was shocked when it came out that virtually all subjects in medical studies were men. It was a shocker when an unusual study showed that men and women died from heart disease at different rates. The reason so many charities popped up to study breast cancer was because so little research on breast cancer had been done. I think the deficit in studies on women’s health has been corrected to a great extent, so most likely a separate office of women’s health isn’t needed. We’ve come a long way in recognizing that *people’s* health is what’s important. But for *hundreds* of years the idea didn’t even come to mind that women might not have exactly the same experiences with diseases and medications as men.
I am a woman who agrees that it is time to stop dividing men and women into separate and opposing groups. But you could go a long way toward ending this situation by not buying in to it. Some current “feminists” like to stir the pot to make themselves relevant and make news. Don’t reward that with knee-jerk hate and counter-accusations.
I was delighted to come across this newsletter addressing the current situation of men with concern and reasonableness. The responses here make me think you don’t appreciate the brave stand Mr. Galloway is taking on men’s behalf in today’s climate. Do carry on, Mr. Galloway.
Not true. The Congressional Women's Caucus created the Office of Women's Health by deceiving their colleagues. They claimed that female-specific health "only" received 15% of the NIH budget. They conveniently left out the fact that that 15% was already TWICE the amount spent on male-specific health.
Feminists are liars and con artists, and the dismissal of men by the feminist-driven culture is precisely what is creating division between the sexes. Until men get comparable recognition AND FUNDING, the division will continue.
As of now, many times more money is spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, despite similar numbers of deaths for the two diseases. Do you justify the far greater funding for breast cancer over prostate cancer?
So "people's health" is important to you? Are you now calling for a comparable Office of Men's Health, or are you just ignoring the fact that that comparable program doesn't exist?
The American Cancer Society’s estimates for testicular cancer in the United States for 2024 are:
* About 9,760 new cases of testicular cancer diagnosed
* About 500 deaths from testicular cancer
Because testicular cancer usually can be treated successfully, a man’s lifetime risk of dying from this cancer is very low: about 1 in 5,000
Pardon me, Frank, if I don’t give credence to any of your other facts. I was going to look into the history of the formation of the Office of Women’s Health, but in light of the above statistics from the Center for Disease Control and the American Cancer Society, and your claim that men and women die at the same rates from these cancers, I don’t see the need.
You are comparing breast cancer with testicular cancer, not prostate cancer. Was that an honest mistake, or were you hoping I didn't catch it? Speaking of the American Cancer Society, they alone spend two times ,more on breast cancer than prostate cancer. When Martin Luther King's son passed away from prostate cancer earlier this year, they virtue-signaled on their Facebook page: they mentioned that prostate cancer claims more black men's lives than white men's lives, but omitted the fact the fact that they were spending 2 times more on breast cancer than prostate cancer. I think that's a case of a turd varnishing itself.
I did make a mistake in giving statistics about testicular cancer instead of prostate cancer. The CDC says that more than 33,000 men died of prostate cancer. I apologize for my snide remark about your research.
I disagree with @Tom Golden and @Frank, I think both of those sentiments reflect a zero sum sort of thinking. If you can't acknowledge the benefit of feminist work then you are missing the point, IMHO. I agree that the label of "toxic masculinity" is not helpful, and yet it is a step forward to call out bad behavior on the part of men when appropriate to do so. I don't think we need to take offense to that. I think men have been done a pretty good job of oppressing themselves, war, capitalism, etc, and feminism has arrived rather late on the scene to really account for anything other than the advancement of women, which is clear. Sure, are there women that are angry with men, but lets be real men are great at tearing each other apart and have been doing it for quite some time now. This is not a zero sum game between men and women and I think that is the most important point. We all can have better lives and lets support each other along the way.
Yes it’s not zero sum game. We need a renewed focus on men’s health, isolation induced mental health issues and related concerns. Making progress on women’s status does not have to be at the cost of boys and men.
But it IS coming at the cost of men and boys. Feminists have made it a zero sum game, by funding women's issues while ignoring men's issues. Back in February, Jill Biden announced that $100,000,000 (of taxpayer funds) had been give to the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research - and zero dollars had been given to men's health. Has Galloway ever mentioned that injustice? If so, I sure haven't seen it.
Feminist in Congress made sure that vastly more taxpayer funds are spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, That is the "benefit of feminist work" you mentioned. Think about that "benefit" at your next annual physical. If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, you can thank the "benefit of feminist work:" for your poorer prognosis.
A few percent of men conspire with a huge chunk of womankind, and the losers are some women and the vast majority of men.
It’s the same in the animal kingdom, look at most mammals, whales, etc. why work humans be different. Women flock to alpha males at the expense of Joe average.
Correct. The nature shows on TV show the two dominant sea lion bulls competing for the harem of female sea lions. The rare show depicts the bachelor colony, the vast majority of male sea lions that can't or won't play that game.
You guys are sounding like incels. I don't know what's gone wrong with humans, americans only perhaps, but there are plenty of women out there who would like a man in their lives, but the men only want the hot models. Which, only the alpha males typically get. So we end up with angry 'average' men and single 'average' women. Pretty silly. Wish I knew how to change it. The best relationships I've seen out there are just average people who found someone they enjoy being with and didn't focus on looks.
You will never find a man if you use misandric terminology like "incels". Men want women that reject the misandry that is built into feminism, and value and respect men. It is that simple.
not my word. I think everybody wants to be treated with respect Frank. But respect isn’t blindly following someone. It’s hearing them, it’s seeing them, it’s recognizing them for them…. and of course it’s being kind.
I remember as a little girl, a friend of mine’s mother was a ‘feminist’. And she did seem to have some anger in her. Understandable to a certain degree, I imagine, given the limitations she had grown up under. As an adult, I don’t see that same anger around anymore. We have a whole generation of women that have grown up, for the most part, with opportunity. And the men of that generation grew up with that too and accept it. The concept that men are inherently ‘better’ just isn’t a thing for the younger generation, so that ‘battle’ isn’t there. They recognize that people are individuals each with their own strenths and weaknesses. Expecatations is what leads people down paths toward conflict. If we can eliiminate expectations, most of which are unrealistic anyway, we eliminate a lot of the conflict between men and women. Anyway, my thoughts for what it’s worth.
Thank you, but it's much more than expectations. Feminists in Congress created the Office of Women's Health, but ignored men's health. That being the case, the male issues that Galloway mentioned will not receive the government funding necessary to address them. I have never seen Galloway make that point, so it is important that that point be raised.
Yep but it’s worse than that. Because in our case boss man Mr Dominant Alpha Bossman Sea Lion and his henchladies can harvest those bachelors - and their sons - and the future productivity of the grandsons - into securitized government debt, send them off to war, and play the off each other to distract them.
Keep calling men toxic and you will continue to see rising numbers of male deaths of despair. Admire and respect men and boys and masculinity and these deaths will decrease. We worry about stereotype threat with girls being exposed to attitudes that they might not do well in math but we don't give a damn about the flood of negatives we pour onto our men and boys. Who could be stupid enough to think that boys should thrive in such a morass of hate.
Absolutely correct. How nice of Galloway to say, "Not all masculinity is toxic". I don't see how he can look in the mirror and call himself an advocate for men.
Back in the early 1990s, feminist Democrats in Congress created the Office of Women's Health, but ignored men's health, both back then and ever since. So why are more men dying from unnatural causes? The answer lies in the fact that feminists and the feminist-driven culture has no concern for the welfare of men. A comparable funding program for men's health would be able to study those issues, and address them. But the necessary culture concern for men and men's lives has to first be created.
Your argument is so similar to those who rebuff the black lives matter movement by yelling all lives matter. Of course all lives matter, but at that moment, and probably still now, black lives were being killed at a much higher level. Going back to 1990, we were realizing that all medical studies were focused on male bodies.....somewhat understandable since researchers were scared to possibly damage a preganant woman's baby, but that doesn't change the fact that the knowledge gained by studying male bodies and trying to apply that to women's bodies wasn't very effective. A new approach that recognized that women's bodies are different than mens (something I think you agree with) was needed. Basically all medical studies were directed toward men.
I think one thing that would help men's health, would be to find a way to remove the stigma of seeking medical care. So many men, especially younger men, do not go to the doctor. Add to that, many fields that men work in, such as construction, don't include medical benefits. I live in a town where people are really active and fit, there's really no over weight people here. Yet, these fit, active men (the single ones in particular) die by their early 60s. I've thought about this for awhile, once I recognized the trend. They work jobs where they get more money than women, which puts them out of govt. funded health care, but they didn't make enough to pay for their own health insurance. My neighbor died of prostate cancer at 60. If he could've just received a govt. funded test, perhaps he'd still be alive. But if we can get the govt. to fund tests such as PSA, Mammograms, colonoscopys for people without health care, would men take advantage of it? To me, that would be a great path to go down to help men. Eliminating the stigma of men going to a doctor would be a huge step in the right direction. It's interesting that married men are so much more likely to seek medical care, I assume because they're being pushed by their wives, and tend to live longer. While I have 3 sons and 3 brothers, I still don't know why men are so resistant to seeking medical care. I'm curious if perhaps you have thoughts on that?
The vast majority of black murders are committed by other blacks.
You wrote, "I think one thing that would help men's health, would be to find a way to remove the stigma of seeking medical care"
No, what would help men's health is FUNDING for men's health. Back in February, Jill Biden announced that $100,000,000 (of taxpayer funds) were donated to the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research; ZERO dollars were given to men's health research. Which also happens to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
If Galloway has ever mentioned these injustices, I sure have not seen it.
Really? You seriously are comparing 3 years of war with 23 years and think that's useful comparison? You undercut your point by doing so. I would also like to know if the death rate from drug use is unproportionally impacting men or have those numbers increased for all? Not to minimize the issue with young men, but I like things to be true and rational. That helps in accurately diagnosing the problem and hopefully in coming up with solutions. The disparity between the opportunity previous generations had compared to today's youth's opportunities is pretty huge. The older generations are holding onto weatlh in such a way that it's easy for youth to become discouraged and more apt to abuse drugs....which our own country has allowed. Why are pharmeceutical companies allowed to air TV ads? It's disgusting. Yes, young men are struggling, but this dial it down to get to the actual issue.
The heart of it is a Bad Drugs problem. Most of the overdoses of the last 10 years are due to street fentanyl, mostly in the form of counterfeit opioid pills. Most of the casualties were addicts who had got hooked on Oxy back in the 1990s-2000s when it was easy to find a State with loose regs (some of them, like Florida, were ridiculous), hop State borders with a prescription (or without one), doctor shop, find a pill mill and buy mass quantities for a habit and/or the diversion market to funnel it into the high schools.
The whole thing kicked off in the mid-1990s, when Purdue pharma salespeople were doing all the "drug education" for doctors who hadn't had any in medical school, telling them it was okay to prescribe Oxy for every little back sprain. Typical "time release" dose was 40mg- 8 times as much as 5mg Percodan that was the same drug. All anyone had to do was chew the pill and boom, better than street heroin. Powerful enough that overdoses from Oxy outpaced heroin by the end of the 2000s. So the Feds cracked down on the pill mills, and now most every state is signed up to a central Federal database, which should have been policy 25 years before it happened. But the rapid cutoff of legit macufactured pills without any alternatives available led the addicts to the street heroin market, which rapidly turned into the fentanyl market, because this is the age of designer drugs. And ever since fentanyl, we've had a REAL drug problem. 40 times the annual death toll, compared to heroin in the 1990s. 7 times the annual death toll from Oxycontin and the other pills in the early 2000s.
Nowadays the surveys show that teenagers are scared off of opioids, because almost all of them are aware of the counterfeit problem and the fentanyl contamination problem that affects other drugs. New users of opioids are down by 2/3- but the cartels have started to put it into every drug that passes through their hands, and it's gotten dirt cheap https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/price-of-illicit-fentanyl-drops-to-dangerously-cheap-in-twin-cities-metro/
At a dollar a pill, some suckers will try that shit. It's an introductory offer.
We need a legal opioid option, like opium cough medicine, quantity and ID controlled at each outlet. We have the technology to do it: I've had my ID copied when purchasing a 6-pack of beer, I've bought booze from stores with quantity limits. We can do the same thing for people buying a bottle of liquid suspension of opium. Also, tightly regulated physician prescribed opioid maintenance for the people with the heaviest habits. The rest of the opioids should remain illegal, but the criminal marketplace will shrink drastically, and that's the most important thing. Not a perfect solution, but it would work a lot better than most people think.
Straight talk: I'm tired of hearing the problems of our catastrophic Drug War policy diverted into another issue. Drug and alcohol consumption is a situation where men are just plain more reckless than women: males start underage more often, they experiment more widely, they take more dangerous drugs, they combine them together more, they care less about the source, they take them in greater quantities, they get addicted more often than females. As a result, men die from overdoses 2-3 times as often as women. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/men-died-overdose-2-3-times-greater-rate-women-us-2020-2021
It isn't Misandry. It's Us, males. XYs. Most of drug addiction is a side effect of Type-R personality, which has a heavily male bias. Drugs are the wrong place to push limits and take risks, because there's no effort involved, and hence none of the natural checks and brakes that are part of most other type-R challenges. The reward comes all at once, bypassing any authentic benefit from testing ones limits. Men like to find an edge to be tested with, but drugs are deceptive like nothing else. It's like testing how deep you can sink in quicksand. And as Stupid Guy Tricks go, playing with drugs that can swallow you whole seems to have an enduring popularity.
I'm recommending liberalizing the laws on a dilute opium formulations because nothing else is going to ensure regulated product safety and starve the money supply of the criminal business, which has been booming for half a century. That's the only reason. I'm advocating it because I throw up my hands. If some people want to get high on opioids, let them have it. I'm tired of seeing Criminal Culture running a controlling interest in the music lyrics, the fashions, the slang, the cynicism, the nihilism, the conspicuous consumption materialism, the alienation, the social divides. The guns, the violence, the climate of lawlessness that's resulted from over-policing peoples personal decisions. We know that some of those decisions are reckless per se, when it comes to drug use.. The lawlessness of criminalization makes the hazards incomparably worse.
Alcohol Prohibition repeal stopped the 14-year process of the gangsterfication of America- for a while. Then it came back worse with Other Prohibited Drugs, 30-odd years later. No conspiracy, just the return of the repressed. And this society has been in denial about it ever since. A time period four times as long as the duration of Alcohol Prohibition, with its 14-year span of the Roaring 20s, Jay Gatsby, the introduction of coed college students to binge drinking. The 1920s was the era that invented the drive-by shooting. How much worse is the decadence and corruption now than it was then- I dunno, 50 times worse, 100 times worse?
But, sure, go on. Blame it on neglected men, not getting our egos stroked enough, dying "deaths of despair." The despair is real. But it's an end stage of addiction, a ride that felt so carefree at the outset. So carefree that few of the addicts even read so much as a single piece of paper outlining the hazards. Especially not the fine print. Most of the illegal drug users I know just jumped in head first, beginning as teenagers. Most of them have been men. Nobody pushed them.
I think if we really want to examine opiate use and deaths of despair we should use a wider lens before we broaden opiate use-I suspect many of these deaths are for people that were first prescribed opiates. If a man works in a position where he can temporarily (or permanently) become disabled, there are financial gains. Federal tax, payroll taxes, many state's taxes are not removed from a disability check, health insurance is provided and often opiates are prescribed. With this smaller payment, the family keeps much more money, qualifies for scholarships at parochial grade and high schools, YMCA memberships, federal Pell grants at college, reduced price/free lunch at school and has a parent at home to mind the children. Now, the disabled man would lose so much financially if he went back to work and he becomes an addict. So many rehabs, social workers, pharmacists and doctors are making money, this will never stop. It will not take long before the addiction destroys what remains of the family.
I had children in the Intensive Care Nursery. They eventually graduated to the "angry baby room". These are the babies born addicted to opiates because an entire system supports Mom's drug use throughout pregnancy (with methadone). Sometimes these newborns cannot be fed, they are so distraught and screaming with the withdrawal discomfort. An army of supports are in place making sure mom never feels any discomfort for her opiate use and can dine at restaurants with special coupons and sleep in a comfortable bed while her newborn goes through withdrawals. No person should suggest allowing opiate use until they have heard these babies and watched the vultures making a living off of allowing this or worse, promoting it. Opiates should be available by IV ONLY, in a hospital or for the terminally ill. People are earning a living off destroying the lives of others.
"I had children in the Intensive Care Nursery. They eventually graduated to the "angry baby room". These are the babies born addicted to opiates because an entire system supports Mom's drug use throughout pregnancy (with methadone). Sometimes these newborns cannot be fed, they are so distraught and screaming with the withdrawal discomfort. An army of supports are in place making sure mom never feels any discomfort for her opiate use and can dine at restaurants with special coupons and sleep in a comfortable bed while her newborn goes through withdrawals. No person should suggest allowing opiate use until they have heard these babies and watched the vultures making a living off of allowing this or worse, promoting it.
I realize that the babies of drug-addicted mothers go into withdrawal. Were any of the drug-addicted mothers in your anecdote addicted to legally prescribed opioids that they had received from their physician? Dose keeping opioids illegal interfere with the pregnancies of the addicts? Dose it interfere with their easy access to impure, illicit, and possibly lethal fentanyl counterfeit pills?
"Opiates should be available by IV ONLY, in a hospital or for the terminally ill. People are earning a living off destroying the lives of others.""
According to this link, 6 of the top 10 prescription pain medications are opioids. It's been that way as long as opioids and opiates have been around. Many millions of Americans are prescribed opioids every year. Millions take them for chronic pain management. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2788755
Maybe some percentage of those millions of people are malingering, I don't know. There were probably malingering opioid addicts in the 19th century, too. And the 18th century, before that. And so on. Civilization can survive a small percentage of habitual opioid users. What's caused the breakdown of society is handing the market over to a criminal monopoly.
The statistics I've found bear out the reality that around 85% of the opioid deaths over the past five years involve fentanyl, most of it in the form of counterfeit pills. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd17bfce-8fd6-469b-af59-a4811c71d12d_1180x1020.png
I know exactly what you're saying about OSHA related disability and SSDI eligibility, and that it exists as a problem and that there's a temptation for people working low-paid jobs to turn it into a long-term welfare benefit that sometimes has included being addicted. But I'd bet that it's a lot harder to get prescribed opioids from most occupational health doctors any more. The Feds began cracking down around 2014. The first thing to do was shut the quantity window. And doctors- everywhere are stingy with opioids any more, sometimes very stingy. That's the sort of overcompensation rebound that happens when the legal prescription trade in a DEA Schedule II substance--supposedly Federally regulated--is left to the separate states to do the oversight for 20 years, with no connection to a centralized Federal database. Well, there is one now, and almost all of the states have signed on to it--but in the 1990s, there was no Federal oversight of accountability for physician prescriptions. And states with regs like Florida or Ohio were just full of script docs and pill mills.
But that's over now. And many of the addicts who started out on legally manufactured product have been forced into the street market, which is run by a different breed of career criminal than scrip docs. That why all the fentanyl deaths, read the linked chart.
you make some interesting points. I watched the Hulu fictional show Dopesick, but it was extremely illuminating about Perdue Pharmacutical and the opiod crisis AND not only the failure of our govt. to limit it, but our Govts. complicity by allowing Govt. officials to make decisions that benefit these companies and then go to work for them for huge salaries. Corporations are running our country, plain and simple. Both Dems and Repubs cater to corporations. The CIA and all of the illegal acts they've done in foreign countries were all about creating opportunities for american corporations. And, they want the american public to be dumb, drugged, and divided. That way they get to continue the status quo...which is corporations and their investors making bank while most americans struggle.
I've read the book Dopesick, which is nonfiction, not fiction.. That has kept me from wanting to watch the series that was made from it. I've read well over a hundred books on the subject of illegal drugs, and that's the one book that had me staring at the ceiling all night after I finished it.
You're raised some really good points. I'll be writing more on them when time allows.
good to know it was based on a book. I always enjoy books more than tv shows or movies based on books. I'll go look for it to read.
I agree. The book is almost always better than the movie:. Always better in the case of nonfiction.
But I'll warn you in advance: Dopesick is not a book to be enjoyed. It was riveting reading. I picked it up in the New Book selection at the library, started reading it there, checked it out and took it home, and did not stop reading it until the end. But it's a haunting book, and not a fun read at all.
I’m sorry, Richard Reeves writes the newsletter and Prof Galloway was his guest.
The reason an office of women’s health was needed was that virtually all medical research had been done on men. You may be too young to remember (I’m 71), but the nation was shocked when it came out that virtually all subjects in medical studies were men. It was a shocker when an unusual study showed that men and women died from heart disease at different rates. The reason so many charities popped up to study breast cancer was because so little research on breast cancer had been done. I think the deficit in studies on women’s health has been corrected to a great extent, so most likely a separate office of women’s health isn’t needed. We’ve come a long way in recognizing that *people’s* health is what’s important. But for *hundreds* of years the idea didn’t even come to mind that women might not have exactly the same experiences with diseases and medications as men.
I am a woman who agrees that it is time to stop dividing men and women into separate and opposing groups. But you could go a long way toward ending this situation by not buying in to it. Some current “feminists” like to stir the pot to make themselves relevant and make news. Don’t reward that with knee-jerk hate and counter-accusations.
I was delighted to come across this newsletter addressing the current situation of men with concern and reasonableness. The responses here make me think you don’t appreciate the brave stand Mr. Galloway is taking on men’s behalf in today’s climate. Do carry on, Mr. Galloway.
Not true. The Congressional Women's Caucus created the Office of Women's Health by deceiving their colleagues. They claimed that female-specific health "only" received 15% of the NIH budget. They conveniently left out the fact that that 15% was already TWICE the amount spent on male-specific health.
Feminists are liars and con artists, and the dismissal of men by the feminist-driven culture is precisely what is creating division between the sexes. Until men get comparable recognition AND FUNDING, the division will continue.
As of now, many times more money is spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, despite similar numbers of deaths for the two diseases. Do you justify the far greater funding for breast cancer over prostate cancer?
So "people's health" is important to you? Are you now calling for a comparable Office of Men's Health, or are you just ignoring the fact that that comparable program doesn't exist?
In 2022, 42,211 females died from breast cancerJun 13, 2024
https://www.cdc.gov › publications
The American Cancer Society’s estimates for testicular cancer in the United States for 2024 are:
* About 9,760 new cases of testicular cancer diagnosed
* About 500 deaths from testicular cancer
Because testicular cancer usually can be treated successfully, a man’s lifetime risk of dying from this cancer is very low: about 1 in 5,000
Pardon me, Frank, if I don’t give credence to any of your other facts. I was going to look into the history of the formation of the Office of Women’s Health, but in light of the above statistics from the Center for Disease Control and the American Cancer Society, and your claim that men and women die at the same rates from these cancers, I don’t see the need.
You are comparing breast cancer with testicular cancer, not prostate cancer. Was that an honest mistake, or were you hoping I didn't catch it? Speaking of the American Cancer Society, they alone spend two times ,more on breast cancer than prostate cancer. When Martin Luther King's son passed away from prostate cancer earlier this year, they virtue-signaled on their Facebook page: they mentioned that prostate cancer claims more black men's lives than white men's lives, but omitted the fact the fact that they were spending 2 times more on breast cancer than prostate cancer. I think that's a case of a turd varnishing itself.
I did make a mistake in giving statistics about testicular cancer instead of prostate cancer. The CDC says that more than 33,000 men died of prostate cancer. I apologize for my snide remark about your research.
I disagree with @Tom Golden and @Frank, I think both of those sentiments reflect a zero sum sort of thinking. If you can't acknowledge the benefit of feminist work then you are missing the point, IMHO. I agree that the label of "toxic masculinity" is not helpful, and yet it is a step forward to call out bad behavior on the part of men when appropriate to do so. I don't think we need to take offense to that. I think men have been done a pretty good job of oppressing themselves, war, capitalism, etc, and feminism has arrived rather late on the scene to really account for anything other than the advancement of women, which is clear. Sure, are there women that are angry with men, but lets be real men are great at tearing each other apart and have been doing it for quite some time now. This is not a zero sum game between men and women and I think that is the most important point. We all can have better lives and lets support each other along the way.
Yes it’s not zero sum game. We need a renewed focus on men’s health, isolation induced mental health issues and related concerns. Making progress on women’s status does not have to be at the cost of boys and men.
But it IS coming at the cost of men and boys. Feminists have made it a zero sum game, by funding women's issues while ignoring men's issues. Back in February, Jill Biden announced that $100,000,000 (of taxpayer funds) had been give to the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research - and zero dollars had been given to men's health. Has Galloway ever mentioned that injustice? If so, I sure haven't seen it.
Feminist in Congress made sure that vastly more taxpayer funds are spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, That is the "benefit of feminist work" you mentioned. Think about that "benefit" at your next annual physical. If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, you can thank the "benefit of feminist work:" for your poorer prognosis.
A few percent of men conspire with a huge chunk of womankind, and the losers are some women and the vast majority of men.
It’s the same in the animal kingdom, look at most mammals, whales, etc. why work humans be different. Women flock to alpha males at the expense of Joe average.
Correct. The nature shows on TV show the two dominant sea lion bulls competing for the harem of female sea lions. The rare show depicts the bachelor colony, the vast majority of male sea lions that can't or won't play that game.
You guys are sounding like incels. I don't know what's gone wrong with humans, americans only perhaps, but there are plenty of women out there who would like a man in their lives, but the men only want the hot models. Which, only the alpha males typically get. So we end up with angry 'average' men and single 'average' women. Pretty silly. Wish I knew how to change it. The best relationships I've seen out there are just average people who found someone they enjoy being with and didn't focus on looks.
You will never find a man if you use misandric terminology like "incels". Men want women that reject the misandry that is built into feminism, and value and respect men. It is that simple.
not my word. I think everybody wants to be treated with respect Frank. But respect isn’t blindly following someone. It’s hearing them, it’s seeing them, it’s recognizing them for them…. and of course it’s being kind.
I remember as a little girl, a friend of mine’s mother was a ‘feminist’. And she did seem to have some anger in her. Understandable to a certain degree, I imagine, given the limitations she had grown up under. As an adult, I don’t see that same anger around anymore. We have a whole generation of women that have grown up, for the most part, with opportunity. And the men of that generation grew up with that too and accept it. The concept that men are inherently ‘better’ just isn’t a thing for the younger generation, so that ‘battle’ isn’t there. They recognize that people are individuals each with their own strenths and weaknesses. Expecatations is what leads people down paths toward conflict. If we can eliiminate expectations, most of which are unrealistic anyway, we eliminate a lot of the conflict between men and women. Anyway, my thoughts for what it’s worth.
Thank you, but it's much more than expectations. Feminists in Congress created the Office of Women's Health, but ignored men's health. That being the case, the male issues that Galloway mentioned will not receive the government funding necessary to address them. I have never seen Galloway make that point, so it is important that that point be raised.
Yep but it’s worse than that. Because in our case boss man Mr Dominant Alpha Bossman Sea Lion and his henchladies can harvest those bachelors - and their sons - and the future productivity of the grandsons - into securitized government debt, send them off to war, and play the off each other to distract them.
Keep calling men toxic and you will continue to see rising numbers of male deaths of despair. Admire and respect men and boys and masculinity and these deaths will decrease. We worry about stereotype threat with girls being exposed to attitudes that they might not do well in math but we don't give a damn about the flood of negatives we pour onto our men and boys. Who could be stupid enough to think that boys should thrive in such a morass of hate.
When will people wake up to the hatred?
Absolutely correct. How nice of Galloway to say, "Not all masculinity is toxic". I don't see how he can look in the mirror and call himself an advocate for men.
He’s afraid.
Back in the early 1990s, feminist Democrats in Congress created the Office of Women's Health, but ignored men's health, both back then and ever since. So why are more men dying from unnatural causes? The answer lies in the fact that feminists and the feminist-driven culture has no concern for the welfare of men. A comparable funding program for men's health would be able to study those issues, and address them. But the necessary culture concern for men and men's lives has to first be created.
Your argument is so similar to those who rebuff the black lives matter movement by yelling all lives matter. Of course all lives matter, but at that moment, and probably still now, black lives were being killed at a much higher level. Going back to 1990, we were realizing that all medical studies were focused on male bodies.....somewhat understandable since researchers were scared to possibly damage a preganant woman's baby, but that doesn't change the fact that the knowledge gained by studying male bodies and trying to apply that to women's bodies wasn't very effective. A new approach that recognized that women's bodies are different than mens (something I think you agree with) was needed. Basically all medical studies were directed toward men.
I think one thing that would help men's health, would be to find a way to remove the stigma of seeking medical care. So many men, especially younger men, do not go to the doctor. Add to that, many fields that men work in, such as construction, don't include medical benefits. I live in a town where people are really active and fit, there's really no over weight people here. Yet, these fit, active men (the single ones in particular) die by their early 60s. I've thought about this for awhile, once I recognized the trend. They work jobs where they get more money than women, which puts them out of govt. funded health care, but they didn't make enough to pay for their own health insurance. My neighbor died of prostate cancer at 60. If he could've just received a govt. funded test, perhaps he'd still be alive. But if we can get the govt. to fund tests such as PSA, Mammograms, colonoscopys for people without health care, would men take advantage of it? To me, that would be a great path to go down to help men. Eliminating the stigma of men going to a doctor would be a huge step in the right direction. It's interesting that married men are so much more likely to seek medical care, I assume because they're being pushed by their wives, and tend to live longer. While I have 3 sons and 3 brothers, I still don't know why men are so resistant to seeking medical care. I'm curious if perhaps you have thoughts on that?
The vast majority of black murders are committed by other blacks.
You wrote, "I think one thing that would help men's health, would be to find a way to remove the stigma of seeking medical care"
No, what would help men's health is FUNDING for men's health. Back in February, Jill Biden announced that $100,000,000 (of taxpayer funds) were donated to the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research; ZERO dollars were given to men's health research. Which also happens to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
If Galloway has ever mentioned these injustices, I sure have not seen it.