Reason #1,980,254 To End The War On Drugs
MichaelW on Jan 15 2008 at 9:35 pm | Filed under: Around the Web
Lawrence H. White recounts a personal anecdote that I’m betting is a familiar one to many:
As I’ve mentioned, I had transplant surgery on Tuesday. After removing my IV lines, the doctors put me on the controlled substance Percocet for pain relief, to be taken as needed up to 4x daily. (Note: the stuff works.) Under federal rules, I had to request each dose, and the nurse had to watch me take it upon delivery. (I might hoard and resell them?) The hospital could not give me any Percocet to take home with me when I was discharged on Saturday. But they could write me a prescription, to be filled at my pharmacy. Problem: I was discharged at 7pm, and my pharmacy had closed at 6pm. The hospital pharmacy was also closed. So, thanks to federal anti-narcotic hysteria, I would be without pain relief until my pharmacy opened on Sunday at 10am.
My wife recently had surgery, and we’ve run into this problem before. Among the myriad reasons to end the War on Drugs, its problems like this interference with the ability to receive health care that should wake people up to how pervasive our government’s reach has become. RTWT.
Sphere: Related Content
While that is indeed cumbersome and silly, for me, it sounds more like “reason #___ for a 24 hour pharmacy in my town.” I might advise that Lawrence emails that post to Walgreens Co. They’ve a tendency to throw up a new pharmacy in a couple of days at the slightest provocation.
That could solve the problem, Lee. But only in the case where the pharmacy can make enough money by staying open that late. In smaller towns where it costs more to stay open night after night, such an option just isn’t feasible. Even for Walgreens.
Plus, you could take almost any single reason for ending the WOD, examine it by itself and arrive at some reasonable conclusion that while there is a demonstrable negation of freedom involved, it is more or less balanced by positive outcomes such a restriction makes possible.
However, when you start to look at the negations of freedom in their totality, and to weigh them against the alleged positives in their totality, neither do the restrictions seem reasonable nor do the particular outcomes appear to the terribly useful.
Besides, you and I both know that the government “fix” for this would be to simply mandate that pharmacies remain open 24 hrs., which would raise prices, and likely cause fewer pharmacies to open.
Don’t go all Heidegger on me Mike.
It was just more practical advice since regulation of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical companies is trending the other way right now, not your recommended way.
Also, at a state level, you might explore how pain management is dealt with under state law. In New Mexico for instance, if you show up at a hospital and tell them you’re in unbearable pain, they have to treat you for it with drugs, based on your word. In New Mex under the medical practice act, under-treatment is grounds for unprofessional conduct by a physician and the courts have upheld it. Something to look into.