The Fourth of July has come and gone. In three years, it will be 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but Gettysburg – also July 4 – was 160 years ago this year. Some of our nation’s greatest struggles have centered on whether those three rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – in the Declaration of Independence are for some or all Americans. Gettysburg was the largest and deadliest conflict ever in the Western Hemisphere. We are not helped by being overly simplistic, but when you look at the horrors of this war, you have to ask this question: Was it possible that (with cooler heads in Congress) the goal of ending slavery could have been achieved simply through political maneuvering?
Many paid the ultimate price, and suffering was everywhere, but thousands were left with wounds and various amputations, leading to the first great drug crisis of the country, lasting for decades. Real pain was treated with real drugs, like morphine.
We have, and probably will always have, some patients with metastatic cancers that need these medications and others to make life tolerable. For reasons that I do not understand, many people today choose to torture their bodies and minds with a host of legal and illegal drugs, and now we have the worst drug crisis that we have ever known.
