[Delta 21]

So by all means, we must protect the poppy fields of Afghanistan with the lives of our brave young soldiers.

[Wolfie]

It’s Not Just An Inner City Problem

If it were, the "solution" would be the same as it was before it spread to the suburbs: Prison or death.

[bert]

The way it works here is that a prescribing physician is identified, a person claiming pain gets a prescription, goes to a specific Walgreen’s store, has it filled, returns to their automobile where they are met by the drug dealers that buy the pills.

Everybody makes money. It’s all legal except for the final payment. The dealer in the Walmart parking lot stays there to collect from the people getting their prescriptions filled. In Tennessee several manufacturers have been taken to court but the matter has not yet been heard in court.

[Pecos]

The other end of this is the situation I have come face-to-face with. Due to age and unfortunate genes, I am subject to bouts of back pain that Tylenol, et al, simply won’t resolve. So, in April, I got a five-day course of Percoset from my family physician. Three months later, when an orthopedic surgeon was getting ready to give me another five day course of the same, he stopped himself because he was afraid of having his license pulled for acting as an adjunct to my theoretical “drug seeking” behavior. Two five day courses of an opioid three months apart is “drug seeking”? Pure stupidity. So, the only answer is to gut it out. Once again, lawyers pretending to be doctors get in the way of the people they claim to be helping.

[Flintlock]

Opium comes from............

...............AFGANA(bleeping)STAN................!!

So-nuke ‘em ‘till they glow, then pi$$ on the ashes.

[zeugma]

One of the biggest problems is that the medical profession doesn't really know how to actually diagnose and deal with pain. My wife had cancer and went through chemo and all that other crap. The pain never went away, but she had difficulty sometimes getting prescriptions from what we needed because of the paranoia of doctors who didn't want to show up on a "high prescriber" list. It is also impossible for the doctor to actually tell how much pain a patient is in. There are indicators, like high blood pressure and the like, but with all the crap she was going through, that was not particularly useful.

Fortunately for her, she was able to eventually manipulate the system to get what she needed. I probably wouldn't have been able to do it myself. Eventually, it got to the point where she was taking enough painkillers to kill a horse and it would barely take the edge off enough to even get some rest. They certainly weren't making her 'high'. One of the big problems was finding what would actually work. Some did, and some didn't. Some would actually make things worse.

Then you have the other side, scammers who make claims of back pain or whatever just to get the drugs. The doctor can't prove the person is faking anything because we don't really have the tools to actually measure pain. In some ways, our ability to produce medicine has outstripped our ability to diagnose it's need. Of course, the government feels that it must get involved, because control is the only thing they know. It is the hammer they have, so they want to pound some nails.