Those pensioner drug addicts

An interesting little commentary upon the nation’s drug woes here. The number of pensioners requiring treatment for the use of currently illegal drugs is rising substantially:

The number of hospital admissions for pensioners with drug-related conditions has increased sixfold in the past decade, NHS figures have revealed.

Charities have said that more older people living with addiction, and that the social isolation of older people can exacerbate problematic drug use such as opium, making it more difficult to recover.

Perhaps it is the anomie of late stage capitalism that is causing this. Although we have a rather simpler explanation:

“The challenges for older opiate users are that many of them have been using for years which makes it more difficult to recover as the behaviour has become so ingrained.

If people survive decades of taking opiates - and we’re at about the right time to find this out, given that the explosion in usage was about that generation ago - then drugs aren’t as harmful as it is often said they are, are they?

The very fact that we opiate users are surviving to be pensioners is another feather in the cap of the argument that we should deal with the problem simply by legalisation.