A NATION UNRAVELS - YOUTH SUICIDE RATE SKYROCKETS - A SYMPTOM OF A ROTTING SOCIAL ORDER - "Working class youth today enter adulthood on the brink of economic catastrophe, often drowning in student debt."

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF A NATION OVERRUN BY "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS ON JOBS AND HOUSING?

"In a recent sobering report published last week by the Society of Actuaries, the cost of the opioid epidemic on the US economy was placed at from 2015 to 2018 at $631 billion. For the present year 2019, the midpoint cost estimate is $188 billion, which means that the cost of the opioid crisis over the last five years could be covered by reallocating the US military budget for 2019."

Youth suicide rate skyrockets in the US: A symptom of a rotting social order

A report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the suicide rate among Americans aged 10 to 24 years old increased by 56 percent between 2007 and 2017. Within the span of a decade, suicide deaths increased from 6.8 deaths per 100,000 people to 10.6 deaths. In real numbers that means in 2017 there were 2,449 more suicides than in 2007. In the same period, suicide ideation, or thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempts doubled for adolescents and young adults.

In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth aged 12-18.

These are remarkable statistics. One could hardly imagine a more chilling indication of the extreme levels of social distress pervading society. How is such a phenomenon to be explained? Perhaps more importantly, wherein lies the solution to such daily horrors?

While certainly distressing, the figures are hardly incomprehensible. Working class youth today are facing social and economic conditions unparalleled since the 1930s.

The youngest generation of workers are entering adulthood in the wake of 40 years of social counter-revolution against the working class. Many cannot afford housing and health care, let alone embark on any of the natural milestones of life such as getting married or having kids.

Working class youth today enter adulthood on the brink of economic catastrophe, often drowning in student debt. One in five millennials are living below the poverty line, and over 60 percent of Americans say that they do not have enough money to cover a $500 emergency. Many can expect to remain in this state their whole lives.

Such conditions have profound consequences for physical and mental health.

The primary reason for this dire economic situation is not “laziness” or “moral degeneration” of young people as some of the cruder analysts suggest. This generation of workers are more highly educated than any other generation alive. Many are working two, three or four jobs to make ends meet. More than 40 percent of new college graduates, on average, are underemployed and about two-thirds of these graduates will remain in jobs that do not require a college degree years after graduation.

Jobs that once provided a decent standard of living have been systematically turned into low-paid temporary piecemeal work that is packaged and sold to youth as the “gig-economy.”

Workers employed in the “gig-economy” are considered contractors rather than employees and therefore have no health insurance, workers’ compensation protections, employer contributions to Social Security and payroll taxes, paid time-off, family leave protections, discrimination protections, or unemployment insurance benefits.

Despite vast advances in science and technology as a whole, this new generation of workers live their lives running from one job to another without any stability or social safety net. Commonplace are stories of Amazon workers, college lecturers, and students living in their cars in the parking lots outside their workplaces trying to make ends meet. Public school teachers leave the classroom at the end of the day and drive for hours a night working for Uber to afford their bills. Young auto workers are brought on as “Temporary Part-time” employees for years at a time for a fraction of the rate paid to full-time workers doing the same jobs.

Workers cannot afford to take time off and certainly cannot afford to get sick.

Nearly all of the gains made by workers over the last century have been stripped away in the “gig-economy.” And if the ruling class has their way, this will be the future of the vast majority of jobs in the future. Nearly 80 percent of major companies in the US are moving toward this contract-based work.

Marx wrote that the capitalist political economy regards the individual worker “like a horse” in that “he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.” The capitalist system degrades and dehumanizes workers, no matter the personal suffering and loss.

This process of degradation and dehumanization stretches far beyond the immediate economic conditions of any given worker. It is expressed in nearly every facet of life. Consider the social and political experiences that define life for this generation. In the past 18 years, there have been 270,000 murders in the US, 600,000 drug overdoses (200,000 involving opioids), 650,000 suicides (130,000 by veterans), and 85,000 workplace deaths. An estimated 700,000 people have died prematurely in the US during this period due to lack of health care. This generation has witnessed, thanks to social media, countless police murderers. They have watched as immigrant families were torn apart and caged within the borders of the US. Each year, they have watched on TV the bloody rampage of yet another gunman shooting up a school or public gathering.

Furthermore, what political option is presented to workers and young people to oppose these conditions? Both big business parties, the Republicans just as much as the Democrats, are committed to upholding the exploitative capitalist system upon which their power and wealth is based. During his eight years in the White House, Barack Obama, sold to youth at the time as the candidate of “hope and change,” orchestrated the bailout of the banks in the wake of the financial crash, oversaw the largest transfer of wealth from rich to poor in history, deported more immigrants than any president before him, and expanded wars all around the world, including pioneering remote drone assassinations. Meanwhile, the trade unions, once vehicles for struggle in the working class, have been integrated into the corporations they claim to oppose, suppressing strikes and selling out workers in every contract for more than three decades.

Yet, in the face of these conditions the mainstream media remains puzzled. Why are young people taking their own lives in such high numbers? The immediate cause of this or that instance of suicide can be wide-ranging. But the underlying reason stems from the economic foundation upon which society is based. The thousands of people who take their lives each year are the victims of the rot and putrescence of a terminally decayed social order defined by staggering levels of inequality; efforts to divide the working class along racial, ethnic and gender lines; decades of the artificial suppression of the class struggle by the unions; 30 years of unending wars and police brutality; and the degradation of social and cultural life. The rising suicide rate is ultimately the product of the failure of the capitalist system.

It is for this reason that the ruling class becomes so uneasy when such stark figures on the social crisis emerge openly. Skyrocketing youth suicide speaks volumes about the state of society. And no faction of the ruling class has anything close to an answer for such problems, perhaps least of all those figures consciously put forward as the state-sanctioned “socialists,” namely Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who promise to end all the ills of the capitalist system, without ending the capitalist system itself. Their perspective and programs are aimed at leading the mass discontent of youth and workers back into the dead-end of the Democratic Party.

The real answer, however, is emerging more openly and more forcefully every day.

Leon Trotsky once noted that, “fortunately,” even under the most dire economic conditions, only a tiny percentage of the population would be driven to end their own lives. “But peoples never resort to suicide,” he pointed out. “When their burdens are intolerable they seek a way out through revolution.”

While this generation is coming of age under incredibly difficult circumstances, they are also living in the midst of an immense resurgence of the class struggle all over the world, and in many cases are actively participating in it..

In a continuation of the global wave of teachers’ strikes over the past two years, last week 32,000 teachers and public school workers in Chicago, America’s third-largest city, launched their second major strike since 2012, once again demanding adequate staffing and resources. Approximately 48,000 autoworkers at GM across the US remain on their longest strike in decades as the corrupt UAW seeks to force yet another concessions contract on them.

Train service was disrupted throughout France Friday and Saturday by strikes, as workers for the state SNCF protested understaffing and unsafe conditions. In Chile, protests that began last Monday exploded on Friday into mass demonstrations over the government’s proposed 4 percent public transit fare hike. And in Lebanon, mass protests demanding the resignation of the government continued into the weekend, sparked by anger over bleak economic conditions, austerity measures and tax hikes.

Millions of workers and youth around the world are being driven into struggle by the same basic issues: stagnating wages, lack of job security, spiraling costs of living, and, above all, the malignant growth of social inequality. They are entering into the streets to win a better world for themselves and for their children, and such a world is not only possible, it is historically necessary.

It is to this social force that workers and young people in the US must turn.

Reports highlight rising methamphetamine health crisis across US Midwest

Data compiled by the Wisconsin State Crime Lab highlights the staggering rise in the use of methamphetamine across the state. Over a 10 year period the agency recorded over a 450 percent increase in meth related cases, from 314 in 2008 to 1,452 in 2018. This follows an earlier report that revealed that 3,800 people died in Wisconsin from 2014-2018 due to meth related overdoses.

This is a region-wide issue, with the Missouri State Highway Patrol reporting a similar spike in drug seizures over the same period. Iowa and Illinois have also seen a surge in meth related cases. Morbidly dubbed the “meth capital of the Midwest,” Michigan saw 220 meth seizures by police in 2018. The increase in drug seizures has lead to more meth related arrests and fueled higher rates of incarceration.

To the west of Wisconsin, the Drug Enforcement Agencies’ Omaha Division, which oversees Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota has seen a similar jump in meth cases or seizures. According to the DEA, more meth-related drug seizures have occurred in the region in the first half of 2019 than in all of 2018.

A “seizure incident” includes scenarios in which state or federal authorities discover drug paraphernalia or equipment used to make illicit substances, including chemical tubing, glassware, beakers, or dumpsites.

The introduction of methamphetamine into the general population began in World War II with the War Department issuing amphetamine and methamphetamine to US bomber pilots on long flight missions to keep them alert before they dropped their deadly payload. Meanwhile, US infantrymen were issued the drugs, less for any actual combat effectiveness, but instead to boost “morale” while also increasing “confidence and aggression.”

Following the war, and throughout the 1950s, doctors heavily prescribed amphetamines under the name Benzedrine. Colloquially known at the time as “bennies” or “pep pills,” Benzedrine was used to primarily treat sinus-related issues. In 1960 the FDA approved a new “diet pill” known as Obetrol, manufactured by American pharmaceutical company Obetrol Pharmaceuticals, a mix of amphetamine salts, including methamphetamine, that made up the chemical compound of the drug.

While marketed as treatment for obesity, the drug was used most notably by artist Andy Warhol, but also extensively by long-haul truck drivers, forced to stay awake an unhealthy amount of hours in order to meet their delivery schedules. After widespread abuse throughout the 1960s the drug was eventually pulled from the market in 1973.

After a reworking of the formula and the elimination of methamphetamine the drug was rebranded as Adderal and introduced onto the market by pharmaceutical giant Richwood-Shire, following their 1995 acquisition of the Rexar Pharmacal Corporation, which had slowly absorbed Obetrol Pharmaceuticals throughout the 1980s and 90s. It was given FDA approval in 1996 to treat “hyperactivity.”

While recent media attention has shone a much needed spotlight on the opioid crisis, meth use among Americans has become more prevalent in recent years as opioids have become harder to obtain and more expensive. As more people turn to meth, possibly as they are experiencing heroin or opioid withdrawals or just to stay awake while working multiple jobs to survive, a corresponding increase in the amount of meth related deaths has also occurred.

Nearly 60 percent of meth users relapse within the first year while going through rehabilitation treatment. This relapse is a particularly deadly period for older meth users, as the strong chemical effects of the drug can have a deadly effect on an aging user’s heart and brain. Unlike opioids, there is no medical treatment for meth addiction.

According to national government statistics compiled by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, among all ages, 10,333 people died in 2017 due to methamphetamine overdose. This is out of 70,237 total drug overdose deaths in 2017, accounting for nearly 14 percent of all overdose deaths that occured in the United States.

While a rise in cases and seizures doesn’t necessarily correspond to a rise in usage, statistics compiled from various state and federal agencies confirm that meth use has not subsided from its alleged highpoint in the mid-2000’s, which saw the passage of the 2005 Combat 

The 2005 bill, signed by George W. Bush and passed with bipartisan support, sought to criminalize over-the-counter medications such as Sudafed that were used in the manufacture of methamphetamine as well as for treating common allergies. The legislation, while funneling money to police departments and federal drug and immigration agencies, did little to actually stop meth production and use.

While the bill did force out and shut down many smaller local labs, while also incarcerating thousands of people across the country for a medical problem, large scale production continued in the US southwest and across the border in Mexico. Powerful drug cartels took over production, and using industrial methods, began producing more potent and pure methamphetamine that was trafficked into large cities and then distributed throughout rural communities.

This shift in production is expressed in the arrest reports of the various state agencies. There were only eight “seizures” of 11 pounds of meth or more throughout all of 2005. The largest of these raids occurred in Omaha, Nebraska which netted 29 pounds of the drug. This amount is dwarfed by raids completed in the beginning of 2019 in Minnesota and Iowa, which have seized 250 and 119 pounds of the drug respectively.

This hasn’t stopped politicians and law enforcement officials from loudly proclaiming the need for more money to be poured into state police forces and federal drug and immigration agencies, while also blaming the legalization of recreational marijuana in a number of states for an increase in alternative drug production and use.

While police departments and federal agencies such as the DEA and ICE have been flooded with billions of dollars in funding for drones, urban assault vehicles and military weaponry, funding for treating substance abuse as a public health issue has been relatively sparse and surrounded by layers of bureaucratic red tape, making it nearly impossible for those seeking treatment to get the help and resources they need.

The federal government did recently make $6 billion available for opioid treatment throughout the United States, however, this money is limited to opioid related treatment only. This means that many users who might have previously used opioids but recently switched to the more available and cheaper meth, are no longer eligible for opioid specific treatment options and funding.

In an article published by Urban Milwaukee, Jess Przybylski, a Wisconsin mother of two, related that it was easier for her to get treatment for her addiction after she was arrested for meth related charges as opposed to before. In a testament to the backwardness and illogical character of capitalism, Przybylski was forced to sit in a jail cell for four months, waiting for a bed to open up at a local treatment facility before she could begin her recovery process.

While Przybylski says she is thankful that after getting out of jail she had access to the longer care treatment program she needed, she recognizes that many don’t, and without will likely fall back into old patterns. “If you get out and you don’t have anywhere to go, where are you going to go? Back to what you’re comfortable with and back to where you were using,” she noted.

In states such as Wisconsin, where $63 million was made available to combat opiod addiction, very little of it will actually get spent on those who need it the most. According to the latest survey by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, of the 397,000 people in the state with addictions related to substance abuse, less than 10 percent actually received any medical treatment.

This red tape has resulted in treatment homes being forced to turn away those looking for help lest they lose their funding. Nearly 40 percent of all substance abuse treatment funds in the state come from the federal government, and without those funds a majority of them would cease to operate.

After decades of the drug war, which has torn apart millions of homes, and incarcerated millions of people, the solution to the continued epidemic of drug abuse and death is not in more policing, jailing or profit-driven “addiction centers.” The root cause of drug abuse lies in the capitalist system. The continued existence of the profit motive has incentivized global corporations to continue to manufacture and profit off of deadly drugs, overseen by a bought and paid for government of the oligarchy willing to turn a blind eye as entire communities are destroyed by their “medicine.”

Major distributors and manufacturers of opioids avert trial by reaching $260 million wrist-slap settlement in Ohio

On Monday, three major drug distributors and Teva Pharmaceuticals, the Israel-based manufacturer, avoided a landmark federal opioid trial by reaching a wrist-slap settlement with two Ohio counties for $260 million. The agreement was reached shortly after midnight and announced in the morning.

Under the agreement, the nation’s three largest distributors, AmerisourceBergen, McKesson, and Ohio-based Cardinal Health—the three distribute 90 percent of all medicines to pharmacies, hospitals, and clinics in the United States—will pay $215 million.

Teva will make a cash payment of $20 million to Cuyahoga and Summit counties to be paid by 2021. They will also donate $25 million in the drug Suboxone used in the treatment of opioid addiction. Henry Schein, a smaller New York-based distributor, reached a $1.25 million settlement, while Walgreens, another defendant in the lawsuit, will have its trial delayed.

The settlement is seen as a “bellwether” case for opioid lawsuits moving forward. As part of these settlements, the drug companies make no admission of guilt in the opioid overdose crisis which has ravaged the US. Avoiding trial also keeps closed internal documents that would expose the inner workings of these manufacturers and distributors.

There have been more than 2,300 federal lawsuits filed against said companies over the upwards of 400,000 deaths attributable to the use of opioid drugs. Most of these cases had been filed by cities and county governments nearly two years ago, with many states filing cases only more recently.

The two Ohio counties had been seeking more than $8 billion for damages sustained to recoup medical expenses and establish long-term addiction treatment facilities for individuals affected by the opioid epidemic. There were no discussions within the mainstream news outlets as to why the sum of the settlement fell so astronomically short of the original amount being demanded.

Still under wraps is an ongoing negotiation between the three distributors and two manufacturers, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, with federal and state attorneys on a global settlement worth $48 billion. What remains to be determined is how the money will be distributed to various states and county governments. It is also unclear how much of these funds will proceed to pay legal fees, sit in general funds for state legislatures or ultimately provide a modicum of relief for the numerous catastrophes created by this epidemic.

Democratic Attorney Generals Josh Stein of North Carolina and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania have been leading the negotiations for a national settlement. The proposed deal would have the three distributors and Johnson & Johnson give $22 billion in cash paid out over 18 years. Teva pharmaceuticals would give $250 million including additional drugs for the treatment of addiction valued at $23 billion. The distributors would also provide $3 billion in distributions services for over ten years.

Another proposal is to create a national trust fund where cities, counties, and states would apply for money. And still another model being considered is to apportion the money into state, city and county coffers with the largest for general public funds to be used for treatment.

In a recent sobering report published last week by the Society of Actuaries, the cost of the opioid epidemic on the US economy was placed at from 2015 to 2018 at $631 billion. For the present year 2019, the midpoint cost estimate is $188 billion, which means that the cost of the opioid crisis over the last five years could be covered by reallocating the US military budget for 2019.

The breakdown in the cost of the crisis includes $205 billion in excess healthcare for the management of individuals with opioid use disorder, infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, or neonatal withdrawal syndrome. Premature death from drug overdose accounts for $253 billion in lost lifetime earnings. Criminal justice costs that include police engagement and legal proceedings, lost property due to crime, and cost of jails and prisons totals $39 billion.

Additionally, child and Family Assistance and Education Programs, which are government-funded, contributed another $39 billion. Lost productivity, costs associated with absenteeism, reduced labor participation, time incarcerated and employer costs for disability and workers’ compensation benefits total $96 billion.

The projected cost of the opioid crisis since 2001 is estimated at $1.5 trillion, according to nonprofit health research and consulting institute Altarum. From 2016 to 2020 the cost curve has doubled. The cost is born predominately by workers and their families in the form of lost wages. It is estimated that there is $800,000 per person in lost wages at an average age of 41 among overdose deaths. In 2017, more than 72,000 deaths were reported, and in 2018, 68,000.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Teva pharmaceuticals had revenues totaling $18.9 billion. Johnson & Johnson totaled $81.6 billion. According to Health & Pharmaceuticals, the United States alone holds over 45 percent of the global pharmaceutical market. In 2016, this share was valued at around $446 billion. Six of the top ten companies were from the United States.

The 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health provided a snapshot of the state of the drug abuse epidemic in the United States. The report found that 1 in 12 American adults (19.7 million) had a substance abuse disorder and 1 in 5 (46.6 million) had a mental health illness. More than 8.5 million of these have both disorders.

The treatment of substance abuse disorder can take years or last a lifetime. As the staggering numbers demonstrate, confronting the social burden of this long-standing criminal assault on the health of the nation would require the reallocation of the vast resources which will remain locked away in the bank vaults of these companies and their shareholders or squandred on war.

However, the purpose of the present settlements, in line with the goals and purpose of these various political representatives of the financial oligarchs, including the judicial system, is to rapidly shut down legal maneuverings and claim the limited settlements as a victory over the pharmaceutical giants.

For millennials, Bay Area home ownership a fading dream

Survey finds residents in their early 20s through late 30s face more expensive, bleaker housing future

FILE – This Wednesday, July 5, 2017, file photo, shows a “Sold” sign displayed in front of a house in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

By LOUIS HANSEN | lhansen@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: October 20, 2019 at 5:00 am | UPDATED: October 21, 2019 at 11:23 am

Cinnamon Westbrook knew the Bay Area would be challenging but expensive when she moved from Texas to take a position as a psychologist at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

She and her husband, Robert Porter, a lawyer, settled into a rental in Sunnyvale — a reasonable commute for both and a place they could stay while Westbrook was expecting her first child.

But during her pregnancy, their landlord announced she was planning to renovate the home and move in, prompting an eight-month-pregnant Westbrook and her husband to frantically search for a new home.

“We had no plans to move,” said Westbrook, a 35-year-old with a doctorate in psychology. High prices and unstable housing have caused the couple to reconsider their long-term future in the Bay Area. “It’s been such a nightmare,” she said.

They’re among the growing number of Bay Area millennials who feel more and more angst about their ability to continue living here. Residents in their early 20s through late 30s face a more expensive, more crowded and generally bleaker housing future, according to a recent survey by real estate website Zumper.

Among millennials surveyed, 3 in 10 expect to move elsewhere in the next year, and 4 in 10 live with a significant other — higher than any other age group. Many no longer believe home ownership is part of the American Dream.

“I think people feel like they pay to play here,” said Zumper CEO Anth Georgiades. Young professionals can put up with high Bay Area prices for the possibility of a big payoff — a successful startup, appreciating stock options and the opportunity to work in a diverse and competitive culture, he said.

Zumper, a website for rental listings and property management, conducted the informal survey of 10,219 online U.S. users in May and June. The survey, open to those 18 and older, reflected its heaviest users — younger renters living in cities — rather than a broad cross-section of renters around the country, the company said.

Bay Area renters surveyed were far more likely to live with roommates than their peers in other parts of the country. About 37 percent of the region’s renters lived with roommates — not their parents or partners — compared with 24 percent nationwide.

Among Bay Area renters between the ages of 23 and 38, roughly 4 in 10 said they spent more than the recommended 30 percent of their gross income on housing. Most experts consider a family or individual “rent-stressed” if they spend more than one-third of their paycheck on shelter.

About half of survey respondents said they spent more than an hour a day commuting.

The grind of finding housing in the Bay Area often means frantic apartment searches, budget-stretching leases and family help. Many say the best hope for hanging on and buying a house is financial aid from parents.

Sonya Herrera, 28, has moved several times since she started college at San Jose State, most recently renting a home infested by roaches and rats in downtown San Jose, she said. Eight people shared the space, each with their own bedroom but using common bathrooms and a kitchen. At least, she said, “everybody else is struggling like you.”

Herrera paid about $800 a month but wanted to save money while she completed her studies. So she moved back to Stockton with her mother at the beginning of October, pays $300 a month toward rent and tries to get out of the house as much as possible.

She does not expect to stay in the Bay Area long-term. Herrera sometimes looks at real estate listings and found a condo in downtown San Jose for $750,000. “That would get me three houses in Stockton,” she said. “It doesn’t really make sense.”

Kelsey Banes, also a psychologist at the Palo Alto VA, found a bungalow in the nearby downtown. But soon after she moved in, she received an eviction notice. The downtown property with three rental units had been sold, and the buyer planned to build a large custom home on the spot.

In the middle of a housing shortage, Banes said, the city was eliminating affordable apartments. “It just sort of made me crazy,” added the 33-year-old with a doctorate degree. “It’s going to be way too expensive for any millennial.”

Banes found another rental nearby, sharing a two-bedroom with a roommate and paying about $2,000 a month. It’s not ideal.

“I would like to have the stability of a home,” said Banes, who joined the local YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) group in Palo Alto and plans to become a full-time housing activist. “I wouldn’t want to have a family in a situation where we could be evicted at any time.”

Bay Area millennials share a common goal with the rest of the country — roughly two-thirds of those surveyed said they believe the American Dream involves home ownership.

Hayes Shair and his wife, Shannon, moved back to the Bay Area in 2014 after a few years on the East Coast finishing their graduate studies. Both of their families lived in the Bay Area, and the couple wanted to have their two young children grow up near their grandparents.

The couple rented a home from Shannon’s parents in Fremont. They paid market rent but avoided the hassle of an apartment search with young children.

Hayes, an architect, and Shannon, a lawyer, eventually saved enough money for a down payment on a four-bedroom craftsman home in Fremont. It was a struggle, Hayes Shair said, but “we’re very blessed.”

Westbrook and her husband now rent a home in Los Gatos. They still own a home in their previous city, Dallas, and are baffled and frustrated by how much more difficult it is to live in the Bay Area.

Some long-time residents in their neighborhood have shared their own stories about scrimping and saving for a down payment. Westbrook bites her tongue.

“They look at us like we’re lazy or bad with our money,” she said. These days, she added, “You can’t just scrimp and save.”