A Casuality of the War on Drugs
Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). are my new heroes. Kohl and Whitehouse are asking the Drug Enforcement Agency to scale back their enforcement of the Controlled Substance Act as it is “producing a troubling side effect by denying some hospice and elderly patients needed pain medication” reports The Washington Post.
As a doctor in Virginia said, “”Prescribing narcotics in a long-term care facility seems to be more of a nuisance than it needs to be. For the doctor and the nurse it’s a nuisance, but for the patient it is needless suffering.”
Last December and January, my mother-in-law was under hospice care in our home and I could not imagine not having morphine to administer to her in her final weeks.
Tags: War on Drugs
Speaking as the husband of a patient with chronic degenerative diseases that cause significant pain, I think we need to reexamine the way the FDA and DEA and their state counterparts go after doctors (and now pharmacies) over prescriptions for pain medication.
Especially since we today got word that my wife’s pain medication may be cut (again) because of new caps being placed on the quantity that may be prescribed in a month. Which means, of course, that as her condition and pain worsen, she has to get by on fewer and/or less effective medication.
It is about time. Making people suffer like that is inhumane. Patients and doctors need to govern this based upon need.
As for the people who siphon some off from relatives to sell, they are scum and can be dealt with when caught. It should not be the priority. The reasoning for this push is backward if we accept the premise that over perscription ends up on the streets. There is no public good keeping medicine from the people who need it to push people who don’t into hard street drugs which rackets up our crime. Perscription medication taken by people on the streets is so many times safer than street drugs that it makes no sense to crack down on keeping them out the hands of people who will then get street drugs.
Oxy kills 12 people while cocaine kills 9000 in the same period so drive more people to cocaine?
“Perscription medication taken by people on the streets is so many times safer than street drugs that it makes no sense to crack down on keeping them out the hands of people who will then get street drugs.”
Do you know anything about this topic? Any of you?
It is not “safer”. In many cases, like oxy, its just synthetic versions of the older more “naturally derived” stuff. Oxy is synthetic heroin.
Ask DJ AM, Michael Jackson, and the thousands of other people who die every year from abuse of controlled substances, how “safe” it is…
And your little 9000 to 12 ratio… you just fucking made that up.