Sunday, July 20, 2008

Plentiful Pills

What I would like to know is where are all these prescription drugs coming from that our kids are popping, sniffing and injecting? Upon learning my son had an addiction to pain pills this was a question that haunted me. According to him, every kid he was hanging out with was sniffing pills and they were buying pills from dealers "right down the street". As luck would have it, we had settled into a very quiet, very nice middle class neighborhood, so it was beyond my comprehension that there were 'dealers down the street'. Oh, how wrong I was. So where were the dealers getting them? Pharmacy break-ins? I was pissed. My son is addicted to prescription pain pills and I wanted to know where these damn pills were coming from.

First there is the obvious....illegal smuggling and drug trafficking.......United States Border Patrol are seizing massive amounts of illegal drugs all the time? Our borders are being patrolled, even random traffic stops produce large amounts of illegal drugs on occasion. But what about Internet prescription drug sales? This article was a jaw dropper...
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/prescription/a/blcasa040226.htm

Recently I discovered a couple of other ways that prescription drugs may be getting into the hands of our children... these situations were actually experienced first hand.

The scenario:
Grandma has a prescription of morphine and other pain meds due to a number of ailments and old age to boot. My grandmother has a stash of morphine that would kill 20 elephants........ These pills have been flowing freely to her residence via FedEx. She does not even take half of what is prescribed but still they come like clockwork. When we informed the doctors and hospice nurses that she was not taking them all we assumed they would take them back and dispose of them right?.....Wrong!....Their 'policy' would not allow them to take these meds back so they told us to 'just dispose of them ourselves'. Being that I am going through what I am going through, I felt like punching this nurse in the face... You MUST be kidding me!

Another true story:
Robby had his wisdom teeth pulled on a Friday...got a prescription of 15 percocets to fill. By Monday morning he was out.... unbeknownst to me he called the doc and easily had it re-filled .... no questions asked. It was that Thursday night when I had him in the ER with severe withdrawal. I did not turn in the doctor, but I should have. How many doc's do this?

And then there is the good old Doctor/Pharmacutical relationship. Pushing meds is a win/win situation for both parties.....It is disgusting! It makes me want to vomit. Are their kids addicted yet? Another article that pisses me off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042800896.html

In 2007 doctors filled more than 45 million prescriptions for an antipsychotic, according to IMS Health. Yet there are only 2.4 million schizophrenic patients (for whom the drugs were originally intended), according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

And that’s just the overprescription of one pill!
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/06/stop_casual_rx.html

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