Prescription drug abuse. Why aren’t the drugs being stopped?

Prescription drug abuse is devastating Kermit, West Virginia. We’re talking hard core downers, heroin substitutes like Vicodin and Loracet. Police play whack-a-mole trying to close pill mills. Organized crime is moving in. The incidence of violence and overdoses is soaring. But this isn’t just happening in West Virginia, it’s everywhere. How is it that controls are so lax that millions have no trouble getting legal opiates? Yes, addicts are responsible for their behavior. But there is a whole lot of aiding and abetting here. Folks in the shadows are getting rich off the misery.

Back in the late 1960’s I took a lot of amphetamines and much of it was pharmaceutical pills such as benzedrine, dexedrine, biphetamines, and crystal meth. I guess those pills must have fallen off the back of delivery trucks by the millions because they sure were readily available.  Drug companies haven’t changed much. We know nothing, they say. Yet they profit hugely from their drugs being used illegally.

I survived meth. In Utah, where I live now, tweak (meth) is a scourge. Families are mangled and destroyed. The state will take  kids if their parents or house test positive for meth. I know several women who cleaned up for keeps after their children were taken from them, and now have them back. So, recovery is possible.

But it sure seems like a curiously asleep federal government makes it too easy to get addicted. If the federal government made it clear that MDs who write bogus prescriptions will lose their license and maybe go to prison, much of the illegal pill trade would stop. But instead we have vast quantities of powerful drugs being diverted fo illegal sale on the street. It’s been going on for decades with apparently no one in power having a clue how to stop it. Or perhaps they are more corrupt than clueless.