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| Image Source - Alex Telford's Blog |
Good morning Friends,
I went down a pain meds rabbit hole, ended up learning about Dr. Paul Janssen and the origins of pain management, and created a rough timeline to keep up with all the material I have gone through so far.
1. 1960s: Dr. Paul Janssen’s invention of fentanyl in 1959 as a synthetic opioid for severe pain relief. It became the preferred alternative to morphine (50–100x more potent, so a little dose goes a long way) worldwide, including in the US. (Summer of Love and LSD/counterculture somewhere around here.)
2. 1970s: Pablo Escobar (had to figure out where he fit into the whole narrative) and the cocaine (plant-based, from the coca plant) boom, plus Nixon’s “public enemy number one” rhetoric on drugs.
3. 1980s: Crack epidemic, “crack baby” narratives, Reagan’s War on Drugs = mass incarceration (also enter El Chapo). Also the AIDS epidemic (needles/heroin, sex for drugs).
4. 1990s: Purdue Pharma markets Oxy as a safe, less addictive option, fueling the first wave of the opioid epidemic. (Philly’s Kensington becomes known for high-purity heroin and gets nicknamed the “Walmart of heroin.”)
5. 2010s: Height of the crackdown on prescription opioids makes them harder to obtain. They are replaced by heroin (semi-synthetic, chemically modified from opium poppies—again, enter El Chapo), which is cheaper = second wave.
6. 2013: Fentanyl makes a “comeback,” but now as an illicitly manufactured product (not the 1959 Dr. Janssen version), first from China and then via Mexico. At first it is added to heroin to increase potency = third wave. Then it moves into a fourth wave where it becomes polysubstance use (mixed with other compounds like tranq, sometimes pressed into pills to look like prescription drugs).
7. 2025: Trump’s “weapon of mass destruction” rhetoric.
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| My Rough Notes |
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