DRUG OVERDOSE - STATEMENT FOR OVOM
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The use of particularly dangerous drugs has been internationally made illegal since 1912 because they are in most cases deadly, not only destroying the lives of users but also the lives of a whole constellation of people around them – partners, their children, siblings, parents, friends, workplace colleagues and the community in general.
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We also see that the reporting of drug overdose varies from country to country. Some write death by OD if the person has a needle in his arm. Others often do an autopsy and look for the cause of death. If that person has drugs in the body, it is reported, but it need not be the cause of death but can be a contributing factor. There is a high degree of public ignorance about drug overdose, much of it the result of intentioned misinformation spread by those seeking public and political assent to these illicit drugs becoming as legal as alcohol or tobacco.
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Not just opiates. While opiate overdose gains the most media and political attention, all of the illicit drugs are responsible for overdose mortality. Even cannabis, which was made illegal in 1925, can cause overdose deaths, however mortality caused by cannabis is mostly through suicides, driving accidents, violence and even murders as the result of cannabis-induced psychosis.
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While US overdose deaths had reached 100,000 per year by 2020, not all were from opiates – we know in 2018 there had been 14,600 cocaine overdose deaths. Amphetamine overdoses in Australia, which has had the highest amphetamine use in the world, made up 28% of all drug overdose deaths in 2020. By contrast, ecstasy overdose is rare, despite the misinformation spread by the media and their associates from the drug legalisation lobby, where ecstasy deaths are due to other mechanisms. The drugs are responsible, not their illegality The mantra of the drug legalisation lobby since the 1990s was that most illicit drugs could be taken quite safely and it was their illegality that was causing so many deaths. Indeed, the financier behind the drug legalisation movement then, George Soros, famously said in his book, Soros on Soros, that “If it were up to me, I would establish a strictly controlled distributor network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available." Big business is talking here.
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However, around 2007 overdose mortality from prescription opiates of predetermined strength, purity and dose overtook mortality from heroin, demonstrating that it was opiates themselves responsible for the deaths, not impurities or other substances cut with the heroin by criminal suppliers. In fact, at a time when Australia had the second-highest opiate use amongst OECD countries, an extensive study found that deaths from impurities or other drugs cut with the heroin were extremely rare.
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Overdoses, particularly from opiates, were likewise demonstrated from the same study to be caused mostly by polydrug use – use with other legal or illegal drugs - a practice that persists whether the opiates are obtained via criminals or a prescription. Notably, it is polydrug use that is responsible for ecstasy deaths, where it is the synergies between drugs that makes these cocktails lethal.
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OVOM advises that there is considerable money funding the misrepresentations of the drug legalisation lobby. In 2017, George Soros donated $18 billion of his own money to fund his social agendas, of which drug legalisation is central.
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OVOM distances itself from these spenders like Soros for the legalisation of drugs. OVOM respects the individual, the rule of law and a dignified life and death.