Last year, 50,000 people, nearly 145 every day, died from opioid addiction in the US–including illegal heroin & prescription pain killers. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in this country. The American Society of Addiction Medicine reported that of the 20.5 million Americans over 12-years-old with a substance abuse problem in 2015, two-million involved prescription pain relievers & 591,000 involved heroin. They didn’t break down what the other 18 million are addicted to but it is a combination of alcohol & other addictive substances.

Over 300 million pain killer prescriptions were dispensed around the world in 2015 & 80-percent of them were to Americans. Are we in more pain in this country than in those sustaining war, occupation, neoliberal marauding? What is going on here? Have the pharmaceutical industry & medical profession become legal, high-class drug peddling establishments? Is our pain physical or psychic? Or is there no distinction between them, as Chinese medicine claims?