The Opioid Crisis: True Lies & Fake News?

The media paints the picture that opiate medication is running rampantly out of control in this country.  Use of opioids is often portrayed as making people who require that medication to live a semblance of a normal life look like lazy good-fer-nuthin's and wastes of existence dragging down American society.  Unfortunately the media's information is partially based on lies.

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My wife suffers from chronic pain.  Because of medical mishaps by a young and inexperienced surgeon when she was younger she is now on permanent disability.  She cannot hold a full time job because of the regular need for her to either sit, stand, or lie down depending on the strain on her back, which makes it hard to find a position that requires more than 2 hours a day.  She had to drop out of college early due to medical procedures.  She has been eligible for federal disability benefits since age 24.  Due to the complexity of her issues, she needs to take pain medication orally several times a day and also has an intrathecal pump implanted on her hip under the skin to deliver pain medication directly into her spinal cord that needs to be refilled by a clinician every few months.

My wife's pain killers are opiates.  She does not abuse them.  She can't, because they are federally regulated, painstakingly... (my wife will forgive the pun).  She can't even get her prescriptions a day or two early because of those regulations.  Depending on timing, especially if her refill date is a holiday, there is the possibility of not having her medication at all because of regulations preventing her from getting a refill even when the previous supply runs out.

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Because of hype from the media opiates are equated with heroin, because heroin is also derived from the poppy flower like all opioids.  My wife is not strung out.  She is not an addict. She takes these medications, which are PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR because they do the best job for her medical situation and allow her to be a functioning human being and contribute to society.

Despite being legally disabled she is very active - she babysits both her sister's and my sister's young children on a regular basis.  She manages our 3-flat as well as her parents' 6-flat while they are snow birds in Arizona.  She just recently completed her Associate's degree from College of Dupage in Culinary Arts, and she has started to grow her hobby as a pastry chef and cake decorator into a more steady home-based business - not big enough to live off of, but the point is my wife is no slouch!

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I mention all of this because the most recent copy of NEA Today, the magazine for the national teacher's union I belong to, features an article about teaching the children of the opioid crisis.  See that article here.  It mentions horrible descriptions about children growing up in abusive situations - but the conditions described can happen in ANY abusive situation, regardless of there being drugs present or which drugs are involved.  It mentions one child living in foster care in an addict's home - my wife and I have been trying to have a child for several years now (her medical situation does complicate that), and adoption is not the easiest option to get approval for, especially since we have to disclose my wife's medical situation. If it is so well known that this child lives in that kind of condition, how did that family become a foster family, how is it that a teacher's union's magazine writers could get that information, AND WHY ISN'T DCFS INVOLVED?!

Seeing articles like this infuriates me because they contribute to the negative stereotype my wife has to endure.  That article is basing some of its facts on statistics provided by the Center for Disease Control, as much of the media does.  But unfortunately the CDC's statistics are not accurate, and they even admit as much!  This article here from The Pain News Network is just one article where the CDC has admitted that their data gathering methods and definitions can skew perception because of inaccuracies.

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CDC statistics are skewed because they will count data more than once in the same case.  Example: in an autopsy ruled an overdose, amounts of heroin, cocaine and THC are detected in the blood.  That overdose is then counted 3 TIMES, once for EACH CHEMICAL!  That means that the CDC is registering 3 separate overdoses for the same death!  It also could mean that it is listing overdose as a cause of death simply because the drug was present in the autopsy even though the cause of death could possibly be something else, like a suicide.  The CDC even admits that their overdose data is faulty and unreliable because it counts heroin overdose deaths along with deaths of people who have prescription pain medication detected at time of death, whether the death was an overdose or not - see article here from The American Council of Science and Health.  Unfortunately, those sensationalized numbers get into the press, and those numbers make my wife's legitimate and legal use of a prescribed substance that happens to be in the same family as an illegal one seem like she and others like her are enabling a problem that is not being accurately portrayed.

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So what does this have to do with education?  When I see articles like the one from the NEA and other news reports, it continues to sensationalize a problem for the sake of headlines.  Yes, drug abuse and how it affects children and families is tragic.  I wish lawmakers and organizations like the CDC would have better and more reliable data so that people in my wife's situation would not be negatively portrayed in the media.  Children come to school with different problems and different needs everyday, whether they are drug-related or not.  It is a shame that the atrocities present in the world happen at all, especially to the kids we teachers have to see on a daily basis.

How should we as educators deal with these issues, drug-related or not?  The same way we do day-in and day-out, the best we can.