Which are more dangerous, Guns or Prescription Drugs? Or perhaps not...

Prescription Drug Related Deaths

Drug overdose death rates in the United States have more than tripled since 1990 and have never been higher. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nationally, sales of prescription painkillers per capita have quadrupled since 1999 - and the number of fatal poisonings due to prescription painkillers has also quadrupled.

During 2010 (the year in which the latest national NVSS mortality data are available), a total of 40,393 drug-induced deaths occurred in the United States. The majority of drug-induced deaths were unintentional 74.3%; remainder: 13.1%; suicidal drug poisoning; 7.3% drug poisoning of undetermined intent; 5.1% mental and behavioral disorders from drug use; <1% homicide; <1% medical conditions from chronic drug use.

"The biggest problem is that people think it’s prescription medication that comes from a doctor — it’s OK,” “If you take all of the other types of unnatural death and put them together, they don’t equal the number of drug overdoses we had in 2013,” - Westmoreland County, Coroner Ken Bacha.

In 2010 West Virginia had the highest number of drug overdose deaths, at 28.9 per 100,000 people - a 605 percent increase from 1999, when the rate was only 4.1 per every 100,000. (based on data from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, 2010.) From 2009 to 2011, prescription drug deaths in Fayette County, West Virginia, had almost doubled, reaching 33.5 per 100,000 residents, much higher than West Virginia's average. With North Dakota scoring 3.4 per 100,00, the US average in 2010 came to 13.1 per 100,000.

Prescription drug abuse causes the largest percentage of deaths from drug overdosing. In 2008, more than 36,000 people died from drug overdoses, and most of these deaths were caused by prescription drugs.

Nearly three out of four prescription drug overdoses are caused by prescription painkillers—also called opioid pain relievers. The unprecedented rise in overdose deaths in the US parallels a 300% increase since 1999 in the sale of these strong painkillers. The misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers was responsible for more than 475,000 emergency department visits in 2009, a number that nearly doubled in just five years. These drugs were involved in 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008, more than cocaine and heroin combined.

The quantity of prescription painkillers sold to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors’ offices was 4 times larger in 2010 than in 1999. Enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for one month.

Almost all prescription drugs involved in overdoses come from prescriptions originally; very few come from pharmacy theft.
Most prescription painkillers are prescribed by primary care and internal medicine doctors and dentists, not specialists. Roughly 20% of prescribers prescribe 80% of all prescription painkillers.

People on Medicaid are prescribed painkillers at twice the rate of non-Medicaid patients and are at six times the risk of prescription painkillers overdose. One Washington State study found that 45% of people who died from prescription painkiller overdoses were Medicaid enrollees.

Gun-related Deaths

The difference between prescription drugs and guns is that people generally know that guns are dangerous, while they think prescription drugs are safe.

In the case of guns, rather than blaming the people who own and handle them, the guns themselves are blamed. In the case of prescription drugs, the vast majority, 74.3%, of drug-induced deaths were unintentional, because of the pervasive denialism in the medical fraternity, choosing to blame it on patient ignorance, rather than admitting just how dangerous most prescription drugs really are. For this reason, prescription drugs are much more dangerous than guns.

Prescription drugs are the second most commonly abused category of drugs, behind marijuana and ahead of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs. Physicians are a leading source of prescription opioids for highest-risk users. Highest risk users get opioids through their own prescriptions 27 percent of the time, as often as they get the drugs from friends or family for free or buy them from friends.

Gun-related deaths

In a study on the statistics of guns per capita in relation to gun deaths, based on firearm injury data from the World Health Organization and guns per capita data from the Small Arms Survey, it was found that the U.S. population has 88 guns per 100 people, the highest gun-ownership in the world, and it has 10.2 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people — more than 27 other developed countries studied.

The study also found that Switzerland has 45.7 guns per 100,000 of their population and 3.84 gun related deaths per 100,000. Now even if their gun ownership figures were to be doubled to 91,4/100,000 their gun related deaths would come to 7,68 per 100,000, not even close to that of the U.S.

France has 31.2 guns per 100,000, which is less than Sweden with 31.6 per 100,000, yet France has 3 per 100,000 gun related deaths, which is more than double that of Sweden with 1.46 per 100,000.

South Africa has only 12.7 LEGALLY OWNED guns per 100,000 of the population, but 9.41 gun related deaths per 100,000, because 90% of gun related deaths in South Africa are committed by owners ILLEGAL GUNS. Killings by legal private gun owners barely make it into the statistics as most killings with legally possessed guns are committed by SA Police officers, including the Marikana massacre and other killings.

Please bear in mind that in 2010 deaths due to drugs were 13.1 per 100,000 of the U.S. population, most of which were unintentional / accidental and most of which were caused by prescription drugs.

The standard approach to solving the problem of gun related deaths is to ban guns. By this reasoning it means that solution to the greater problem of prescription drug related deaths should then also be to ban prescription drugs. In the case of guns, the killing object, the gun, is blamed, while in the case of prescription drugs, the user / patient is blamed and not the source, the prescribing doctor, the pharmaceutical manufacturer or the killing object, being the drug itself.

Conclusion

From the above it should be quite obvious that in the case of prescription drug related deaths, the prescribers, the drug warnings, the scheduling and not appropriately informing the patients, are the problems. In the case of gun related deaths, illegal possession of guns is the main, primary, number one problem.

Killings by the police cannot be considered a problem, as it is part of their job to protect the public and to defend themselves, however warranted the circumstances may be. Static totals on gun related deaths, everywhere, always include Police killings, which occurs in their act of duty, and which involve criminals with illegal guns! In all cases, statistics on gun related deaths also include killings by carriers of guns in the various armed forces, which include family killings, partner killings, suicides and random killings committed by them. Statistics also include police officers killed in the line of duty by illegal gun-carrying criminals.

Anti-gun lobbyists always focus all their attention on private gun ownership, never on illegal guns, never on the criminals, which they can do nothing about. They also never focus on private off-duty killings committed by members of the armed forces, like the police.

In the case of the much more dangerous problem of drugs, both prescription and illegal drugs, which kill more people than guns, the focus is always on the potential abuser, the addict, the trusting, ignorant patient and very seldom, if ever, on the supply chain, the doctor, the drug itself; its scheduling, research fraud, related warnings and access to it.

In the case of deaths generally gun lobbyists and activists seldom, if ever, even mention that FACT that the weapons of choice, especially in South Africa, remain knives (the okapi, which is a lock, back or slip joint knife), pangas, axes, spades, hammers, rocks or any sharp object, to stab and injure or kill their victims with, all of which outnumber the use of guns by far. Both South Africa & The states have far higher incidents of death by knives & blunt objects than assault rifles.

Ultimately both guns and prescription drugs are dangerous, while guns are viewed as dangerous and drugs are not, while legal gun owners are viewed as criminals and drug manufacturers are not, but the most dangerous of all are people, especially criminally minded people, worst of all those criminals carrying knives and other sharp objects, and criminals carrying illegal guns.....

Further reading

If you have any doubt about the lethality of a blow to the head with a fist, please google “the knockout game”. Then go read these two blog posts:
http://www.gunnuts.net/2013/07/22/the-danger-of-fists/
http://www.gunnuts.net/2014/02/28/lethal-response-to-an-unarmed-attack/

References

Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses
http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/rxbrief/

Prescription Drug Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic
http://healthyamericans.org/reports/drugabuse2013/

The truth about prescription drug abuse
http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/prescription/abuse-international-statistics.html

Drug-Induced Deaths — United States, 1999–2010
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6203a27.htm

Policy Impact: Prescription Drug Overdose State Rates (2010)
http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/rxbrief/states.html

Overdose deaths from prescription drug abuse skyrocketing in southwestern Pennsylvania
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/south/2014/01/23/Overdose-deaths-from-prescription-drug-abuse-skyrocketing-in-southwestern-Pennsylvania/stories/201401230018

Physicians are a leading source of prescription opioids for the highest-risk
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0303-prescription-opioids.html

Prescription Drug Abuse And Addiction
http://www.crchealth.com/addiction/prescription-drug-addictions-2/

Prescription Drug Abuse
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/prescriptiondrugabuse.html

U.S. Has More Guns – And Gun Deaths – Than Any Other Country, Study Finds
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/u-s-has-more-guns-and-gun-deaths-than-any-other-country-study-finds/

Facebook post says the U.S. is No. 1 in gun violence. Is it?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/23/facebook-posts/the-us-is-no-in-gun-violence-is-it/

List of countries by firearm-related death rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Number of Deaths Due to Injury by Firearms per 100,000 Population
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Assault or Homicide
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

Khayelitsha's kid gangsters
http://www.groundup.org.za/con.../khayelitshas-kid-gangsters

We need more gun owners in South Africa, not less
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/readerblog/2014/03/24/we-need-more-gunowners-in-south-africa-not-less/comment-page-2/

Whites Murded in South Africa During 2013 and to Date 2014

Why do we compile and publish these lists whites murdered in South Africa under ANC rule since 1994?
Because we care!
Because we actually have people who care so much that they go to the trouble of doing this for our people!
Because no one else would do it on our behalf!

Why only the names of whites?
So where are the blacks, Coloureds and Indians doing the same for their people? If they do not even bother doing it for their own people, why should they bother doing it for whites?

UPDATED LIST OF WHITES MURDERED IN SOUTH AFRICA - UNDER ANC RULE - DURING 2013 AND THUS FAR IN 2014

TOTAL – 212
MALE – 158
FEMALE – 54
AGED OVER 60 - 107

Could Voting Have Avoided The ANC's Land Grabbing Legislation?

Judging by comments to my previous article "Should we or should we not vote... and why?", apparently, it is not necessary to vote, but one has to ask, had everyone voted, for whichever political party other than the ANC in order to reduce the ANC's majority in parliament to the least number of seats needed for a party to rule, would these pieces of legislation still have been passed?

Of course it does not change the fact that we have two ANC's in parliament, being the ANC and the ANC disguised as the DA. It also does not change the fact that, soon, we'll also have the EFF, the militant (bad-cop) wing of the ANC entering parliament, which will of course make things even more difficult to control.

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." (Winston Churchill) and in the meantime the liberal denialist appeasers are panicking, because now their sins are starting to catch up with them personally. The crocodile is hungry and they are next on the menu.

Should we or should we not vote... and why?

There are only two reasons we should vote, one of which is particularly important, but we'll get to that.

Besides the fact that choosing which party to vote for in 2014 must be the most confusing and difficult voting decision in the history of South Africa, the pressure is also upon us to not vote at all.

No We Should Not Vote or Yes We Should Vote?

"Having regular, free and fair elections is one of the cornerstones of democracy. This goes together with other important democratic principles such as the right to vote, to choose which party you want to belong to and to accept the results of an election."

What 'n load of nonsense. The word "democracy" is so overblown, because "democracy" is a farce. Democracy means having the right to make a cross like an illiterate on a piece of paper once every five years. Before that and after that, you have no rights no say and, no input anywhere or, in any way whatsoever. So please do not be fooled by this nonsense about voting for the sake of "democracy".

The Grooming Of A Capitalist SA President

The game of Politics surely is the most interesting game there is. So unpredictable, yet so intriguingly predictable from a bird's-eye view.

An amazing political plan comes together, putting Mamphela Ramphele against Jacob Zuma for South African presidency.

It should be obvious that Agang SA was purposely founded to introduce and sell Mamphela Ramphele to the public, grooming her for the DA as their presidential candidate.

Agang SA is a South African political party, formed by anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele only on 18 February 2013. Before Agang SA she was virtually unknown as a public figure and particularly as a political figure. Obviously funded from abroad, she founded the new political party Agang SA.

It was a party that was going nowhere and it had virtually no followers, but as leader of this dead-duck-party she was afforded a platform and the opportunity to make the news headlines. Small a party as it was, the media gave her huge exposure, beyond anything seen before with any brand new insignificant little party.

The merger between the DA and Agang is announced and almost immediately she gets presented as the DA's presidential candidate?

"Assessing Democracy in the New South Africa" by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

For those really interested in a reasonably objective piece on the New SA, this should be worth reading.

It is a pity the author passed away last year (July 7, 2013) as I would have loved to have a chat to him. I actually set out to find his contact detail and in my quest I discovered that he had passed away.

He presented a paper on SA in February 2002 and I would have loved the same author to update this 12 years on.

"Assessing Democracy in the New South Africa" by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

About the Author

Hamerton-Kelly was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on Dec. 26, 1938. He was a theologian, who spent more than two decades working at Stanford, including 13 years as dean of Stanford Memorial Church and 10 years as a senior research scholar in ethics.

List of Whites Murdered in South Africa During 2013 Compiled by Sunette Bridges

Sunette Bridges posted this list on her Facebook page today. The list contains the names of whites murdered in South Africa during the course of 2013 only.

The first question liberals would ask is 'Why whites only?". The answer is quite simple, because whites care!

The white community is blessed with people like Sunette Bridges and others actually taking the time, trouble and expense of documenting these murders for us. Or is Sunette Bridges also expected to do this on behalf of other groups also? Would the blacks, coloureds and Indian community do this for whites?

While liberals are focused on denying these murders, lists like these prove the minimum number of whites murdered, because each and every one of these cases have been referenced and verified. So even with all the best efforts of internationally funded businesses like Africa Check and others, they cannot deny these murders. While we cannot state that this list is a complete list of all the whites murdered, it does prove the minimum number of whites murdered between January the 1st 2013 and December 31st 2013.

While Sunette's message is written in Afrikaans, the list of murdered whites is compiled in English.

South Africa - A Failed State, But Denied to Make the ANC Look Good

According to a letter published on News24, South Africa's debt will soon reach R1,7 TRILLION (1,700,000,000,000 or 1700 BILLION)

“This is the first time I have felt anxious about the future,” “We never felt pessimistic, we felt optimistic all along, but now, I feel worried for the first time.”  admitted Leon Louw, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and executive director of the South Africa-based Free Market Foundation.

Please see "Further Reading" at the end of this page

How much is a R-billion?
Earning R60,000 per year would take you 16,700 years to earn R1-billion.

The year 2013 ended with the news that South Africa’s state debt was rising alarmingly high. While the debt equalled 27% of the country’s gross national product (GNP) five years ago, it has now risen to 40%.

When SA's debt reaches R1,7-trillion it would mean that each citizen would owe R33,300 without having bought anything, BUT 99% of all taxes are paid by only 3.3 million South Africans.

This means that of the R1,7-trillion, 3,3 million South African tax payers would be responsible for R1 683-billion of that total debt, which means that they would each be responsible for R510,000 of SA's debt.

AND...

Mandela’s legacy: The Collapse and Destruction of South Africa

"We all know that land reform is one of the trickiest and most emotional issues facing South Africa. If handled badly, it could even create civil war. It could certainly lead to food shortages, prices going through the roof and an increase in food imports we can ill afford." - Clem Sunter

"South Africa’s credit risk is rising relative to emerging-market peers on investor concern the nation may get downgraded as economic growth sputters and borrowing costs increase."

"Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s have a negative outlook on the nation’s debt."

"South Africa’s default swaps are the fourth-highest among 25 emerging and major markets monitored by Bloomberg."

"The rand’s 18 percent plunge against the dollar this year, the worst out of 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, is threatening to fuel inflation, reducing the central bank’s room to stimulate the economy."

Source: SA credit risk rises on downgrade worries

“This is the first time I have felt anxious about the future,” admitted Leon Louw, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and executive director of the South Africa-based Free Market Foundation. He told WND that throughout all of the turmoil in South Africa in recent decades, “We never felt pessimistic, we felt optimistic all along, but now, I feel worried for the first time.”

The beautifully decorated rotten egg hailed as a saint

So it took a beautifully decorated rotten egg to draw blinded sheeple from their closets.

Here was a rotten egg that was painted with absolute care over a prolonged period of time, along with much patience and planning. Much thought went into its design, for this rotten egg was to be marketed to the world as the absolute masterpiece, the most perfect piece of artwork the world had ever seen.... a ruthless terrorist presented as a pacifist, as a man of peace, a peace-maker and a saviour, a hoax if ever there was one.

Suddenly now we are finding more-and-more people, even supposedly conservative people, people promoted as "leaders", praising the painted rotten egg, wishing Mandela well, forgiving him and wishing for him to "Rest In Peace", that beautifully painted rotten egg.