Though it wasn’t planned, let’s continue with our theme of self-destruction as examined through the lens of previous columns.
Having just revisited the chronically homeless problem, we’re going to reconsider my contention that, rather than spend our limited resources on efforts like curbside Narcan dispensers, we should be directing that time, energy, and money towards cancer victims.
Rest assured, I haven’t changed my mind. With just 1 percent of opioid addicts successfully recovering in any given year, it’s a quintessential case of tilting at windmills. Given those miserable odds, these well-intentioned Narcan/Naloxone initiatives only serve to enable addicts by reducing the overdose risk.
I’m NOT saying someone should have to die by virtue (or the last thereof) of their addiction, but when you consider that insidious opioid grip, removing any recovery incentive only creates more addicts and increases the crime, public health issues, broken families and other social burdens that go along with it.
If you recall, I came to that conclusion after enduring a morning of observing cancer sufferers in the hopeless Delnor emergency room. My theory was, instead of focusing on folks intent upon killing themselves, let’s direct that cash to cancer victims who were desperately clinging to life.
But even though I’m sticking to my guns on this one, my typically impeccable logic has taking a rather large hit in the form of an American Cancer Society study that found that 40 percent of cancer cases in adults over 30, and nearly half of the deaths, were the result of eminently preventable risk factors.
That revelation begs the basic question, is there more nobility in killing oneself slowly than in dying through a single fentanyl injection?
I’m sure you’ve surmised the most pernicious cancer culprit is smoking, which accounts for 20 percent of new cases and 33 percent of deaths – mostly of the lung variety. The good news is, with just 11.5 percent of the population partaking, tobacco use is at an all-time low. But when 12 percent of the population accounts for one-third of the cancer deaths, it demonstrates just how deadly that habit really is.
Eighty percent of smokers develop lung cancer, while roughly 5 percent of opioid users will die from an overdose. That would certainly seem to put smoking ahead in the greater of two evils race. Even Keith Richards eventually gave it up.
With the smoking population in decline, obesity is swiftly supplanting it as the leading cause of cancer deaths. “Excess body weight” was linked to 5 percent of new cancer cases in men and 11 percent in women. It was associated with more than 33 percent of endometrium, gallbladder, esophagus, liver, and kidney cancer deaths. When we add those numbers to the 300,000 annual U.S. obesity-linked heart disease mortalities, it’s a truly staggering paradox. We are, literally, eating ourselves to death,
Coming in third place is alcohol abuse which is responsible for 3.5 percent of U.S. cancer deaths, or about 20,000 people a year. Lack of physical inactivity, poor diet, and infections such as HPV round out the list.
So, while I remain steadfast in my argument that our time and money would be better spent on cancer victims than it would on hopeless opioid addicts with no measurable chance of recovery, this cancer study has certainly muddied the waters. It’s demoralizing to consider that, with 612,000 predicted 2024 U.S. Cancer deaths, a quarter million Americans would’ve been spared that fate with a simple lifestyle change.
Some addictions would seem to be just as fierce as fentanyl.
This substance abuse/self-inflicted cancer scenario reminds me of the controversy surrounding baseball great Mickey Mantle’s 1995 liver transplant. A slew of pundits and regular folks were convinced that someone who openly abused themselves as much as Mantle did should be relegated to the furthest reaches of any donor list. Though his doctors vehemently denied, it appeared as if Mantle’s fame played a role in his short one day waiting list stint.
It’s one thing to make cancer victims a priority over drug users. But when so many cancer deaths are deliberate, it’s another thing entirely to talk about a “who deserves to live more” ranking system that’s fraught with more peril than the abortion debate. It’s not a prospect any human being should ever dabble in because no one can successfully cope with that kind of life and death power.
That said, it still wouldn’t be too terribly difficult to justify allocating the bulk of the appropriate resources towards researching and “curing” the cancers that strike regardless of our best efforts. Though even I believe I’m starting to sound a bit too much like Solomon suggesting the baby be split in half.
What I did take away from this new cancer study is this. Though I don’t believe I’ve done so in the previous column or this one, considering our capacity to embrace socially acceptable, but no less destructive addictions, we really need to think twice before demonizing drug users.