Mass Murder and Dangerous Drugs
After combing through the data for hours, academics have discovered the cause of the mass shooting in Charleston. Turns out it was comedian Amy Schumer’s fault. You see, she once joked, “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual,” and that led to a climate of racism that Dylann Roof seized upon when he killed nine people. Previously the experts were sure it was a flag’s fault. They also blamed guns (though few mentioned how these shootings always happen in gun-free zones). I’m a little confused by this latest discovery because I remember George Lopez making a joke about how Chicanos don’t care when their wives have headaches. They just say, “Sucks to be you, roll over.” (I’m paraphrasing.) Black churchgoers likely survived the Lopez joke because the climate hadn’t reached its breaking point yet. I guess offensive comedy’s deadly effect is cumulative? This must be why Amy apologized.
One thing that never seems to come up is how high Roof was. I’ve been watching all the major news media outlets, and the number of Big Pharma ads we see in between segments is inversely proportional to how much we hear about Big Pharma’s culpability in all this. At the time of his arrest, Roof was carrying Suboxone, a powerful anti-opiate made by the pharmaceutical company Reckitt Benckiser. It sounds like he was battling Oxy addiction, which is another thing you never hear about. OxyContin addiction is rampant all over America and is well documented in Sam Quinones’ incredible book Dreamland. This is likely why Purdue Pharma was forced to pay $600 million in 2007 due to the “misbranding” of Oxy. I can’t recall TV news covering this epidemic, but I see it with my own eyes everywhere I go. In rural Ohio, hillbilly junkies are all over the trailer parks. They start out with Oxy and then switch to heroin because it’s cheaper. You see this in Florida, too, and near my place in upstate N.Y. A kid OD’d about a mile from my house and we are in the middle of nowhere. I find it really disturbing to drive 100 miles from New York City only to hear a farmer in camo bitching about the local heroin dealer and what he’s doing to the community. Suboxone is used to get off heroin but it’s said to bring just as many problems, including “psychosis.”
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