In no country other than the United States have prescription opioid misuse, abuse, and death rates reached epidemic proportions. These problems increased in parallel with increased prescribing for chronic pain. More and more pain conditions were being treated with opioids using higher and higher doses. Prescription opioid misuse was called out as an epidemic in 2012, but this was only the first wave of the current opioid epidemic in the United States.
It’s finals week; you’ve been studying in the library for a good six hours and feel your concentration slipping away. The numerous coffees and Redbulls you’ve consumed haven’t helped either. A friend of yours uses Adderall to help him study, and you’ve taken it before as well. Desperate to focus, you call him up and buy a few tablets that will last you the week. This is a common case of prescription drug abuse on college campuses.
From New America Media and Richmond Pulse: Across the San Francisco Bay Area, young people are using all kinds of drugs – well known, obscure, illegal and prescription. Although the names and effects of the drugs may vary, what’s consistent is that youth are a major segment of the population abusing them, often mixing multiple substances at the same time. And in Oakland, Richmond and other East Bay communities, it’s the prescription drugs that appear to be gaining popularity among youth.
Banning TikTok would benefit Meta and Google, their parent companies, but it wouldn’t benefit national security. People would still be exposed to as much junk news as before, and experience shows that these social media platforms could be vulnerable to manipulation as well.
If relatively simple songs are being underanalyzed, we also lose the power in more complicated expressions of protest in songs like Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” The song’s triumphant chorus, which chants “Born in the U.S.A.,” often overshadows its darker verse.
