Little Mini-rant on prescription painkillers...

[hunter]

56. In practice the DEA becomes a price support agency for the larger drug gangsters...

... the amoral pharmaceutical companies, the money-laundering bankers, and assembly-line style medicine where medical professionals can''t be bothered to, are not alloted time to, or are actually discouraged from getting to know their patients.

High turnover rates of medical professionals in rougher communities is another big problem, just as it is for public school teachers in rough communities.

Punitive law enforcement and regulatory actions usually make these problems worse and escalate levels of violence, corruption, and damaging health consequences.

Most of all, let's be honest, in many communities both poor and affluent, life is empty and sucks. At the bottom of the economy you'll have kids sniffing gasoline and drinking DM cough medicine until they are incoherent and hallucinating, at the top of the economy you'll have very affluent trophy wives trading their prescription opiates obtained from high income politically well connected Dr. Feelgoods for greater quantities of heroin distributed by violent gangster networks that somehow always remain just beyond the reach of law-enforcement.

Fixing the problem is more complicated than controlling the flow of opiates. We have to build strong communities where life doesn't suck. Sadly, that always seems to increase some wealthy person's taxes or cuts into their "profits." Those are the people who own us.