Thursday, December 15, 2005

War on Drugs Hits the Geriatric Crowd

In Appalachian Kentucky. Why? "When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," Floyd County jailer Roger Webb said.

Sickening. Some days you wonder if this country has completely lost its collective mind. Don't help her buy food or subsidize her electric bill. Arrest her and toss her in jail, where the taxpayers can pay for all of that, plus her healthcare costs. We're talking about an 87-year old defendant.

3 comments:

jdallen said...

What's funny/odd about the whole thing is that the drugs don't do squat. When I had an operation a year or so ago, I had a prescription for hydrocodone, which, I hear, is in fairly high demand as a street drug. I tried them for pain, and got little or no relief. I doubled and tripled the dosage and got neither pain relief or any "high" - and I should know, podnah.

I can't figure it. Why do they want crappy drugs like that, when they can get whatever else (and much "better" dope) they want relatively easily?

Anonymous said...

this is the most messed up thing i have seen in a while..


btw, JD... hydrocone does do something.. it just might not do much to you.. different people react differently to drugs.. for instance, most people get addicted to crack, but for some people it is never a problem..

Anonymous said...

and "more than forty of the defendants were over 60."

Did it ever occur to anyone that these Senior citizens sold drugs that were prescribed and purchased legally.

The source was a pharmacy and stopping the source, in some way, is cheaper and more effective than this.

Oxycontin is regulated all over the U.S. so ask yourself; why did "addicts" pick the mountains and senior citizens in the mountains to get oxycontin?

Sounds like an isolated enterprise started by a senior citizen that ended up "snitching" on the folks he originally organized at the nursing home.

The "snitch" came up with the idea, organized the group, profited from it, showed others how to do it, expanded it; then helped authorities easily undo in reverse what he/she did.

It's shameful and embarrassing but not unexpected. Those forty arrests will be logged by all of the participants in the task force (local, state, and feds) as "drug arrests" nothing else.

Arresting 40 defendants sixty years or over wasn't well received but it's a speed bump. In a month, it's still counts as forty drug arrests; nothing else.