Stealing Drugs And Eliminating Health Care

How low can you go? Stealing drugs from veterans?  I am a proud U.S. veteran, prouder still to consider myself a veterans advocate. I’ve seen too many veterans in pain.  I don’t think people who haven’t been there realize how much war is hell. They were stolen by a doctor.  A credentialed anesthesiologist.

I remember when I was first hitting dating bars and such, it was not uncommon for a  non-doctor to wear a T-shirt that said “trust me; I’m a doctor” that I guess was supposed to induce young women into the early stages of romance.

Fentanyl is a frightening drug at best.  That’s the drug that killed the singer Prince.  Although I am sure many folks in great pain use it legally, detoxification from it’s abuse was common when I worked an addiction center.  T-patches were sometimes cut up and smoked.  It was used to bring down the price of street heroin. I wrote about the tragic death of Prince in my blog.

To me the despicable theft of drugs by a trusted professional charged with helping our veterans happened in West Virginia, which will always be a beautiful place of rich and pristine country.  I remember fondly driving through that state, and  where I bought country crafts and dance clogs. A colleague who was once an American wanderer like me, told me it was the easiest state in the nation to buy drugs in. That state’s attorney general sued some wholesale drug providers for perhaps being at the bottom of increased drug availability.

I rack my brain with thoughts about how we could do something about this quickly, to help me avoid hearing what comes next. And a further irony — to add insult to injury — the noble state blighted by record numbers of drug-deaths due to opioids is going to be one of the hardest-hit victims  of the current efforts of the Conservatives in our houses of legislature to undo the funding for the Affordable Care Act (Obama-care) and reduce funding of the Medicaid which goes to treat the unfortunate addicts to the tune of $800 billion. That is about ⅙ the cost of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I will never again be able to hear the phrase “compassionate conservatives” without shuddering. To me — that is even worse than stealing drugs from veterans. So I repeat — How low can you go?