Little Mini-rant on prescription painkillers...

[jwirr]

16. I have absolutely no problem with end of life drugs I actually asked the

nurse to increase my fathers pain pills knowing exactly what it would result in.

But there is another side to this that none of you are listening to. Addiction in the dying is one thing - who cares. Or for that matter in proven chronic pain cases.

However addiction in the young is a totally different issue. I will start by telling you what is happening in areas all across the country and especially on Reservations. We have epidemic level addiction going on here. Young people are dying here.

And most of it is coming from legal drugs. No war against that until recently. How do they get these legal drugs? A lot of ways.

First you go to the ER and you tell the doc how bad you are hurting. He cannot prove that you do or do not. Until recently you got exactly what you wanted.

And then you go to your own doctor and make his/her life miserable until they finally give in and give you the drug. So now you have two sources.

But that is not the end. Your either ask for out of hospital treatment or you are forced into treatment by the courts. They use something like methadone so now you have another source. But this source is dangerous - it can and often does interact with other pain medicines and can cause death.

But by no means are these your only sources. You also have the illegal sources like stealing pills from someone or buy from a dealer.

We are losing our children to this epidemic. So now the doctors and the ERs have been put on notice that there can be no more of this. But there is still a problem. Treatment centers are forbidden from talking with the other doctors about what medications are being prescribed and methadone is not on the prescribed drugs testing list. The only way to find out what is happening is when the patient gets a reaction to a whole bunch of drugs prescribed by different doctors.

And this is just not an Indian problem. It is happening all over the USA with all races.

So I am lobbying to get it legal for doctors to talk to each other about addictions. For states to change the laws. This will help a lot in cutting down on availability.

This is why the DEA is in on this. To educate the doctors that they can often be the problem.

So I have no problem with using pain medications when it cannot possibly matter but I have a lot of problem with legal dealing.