Oxycontin Express

UPDATE:
The video I linked yesterday is long and most people don't have time to look at it, so may not understand the point I was trying to make.  Here is an excerpt from an artilce in the New York Times called "The Alchemy of Oxycontin" has the same message I was trying to get across:  That it is becoming common in certain areas for oxy to become available to virtually anyone who wants it.  This article is about a small town in West Virginia that has been taken over by addiction:

"A few years ago, Paula says, Man was like any small town in America: you could buy a variety of illegal drugs, as long as you knew the right person to talk to. Pot was big; there was occasionally some cocaine around and a few pills for recreational use. Fads would come and go. But these days, she says, the only drug for sale in Man is OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller that users crush -- to disable its patented time-release mechanism -- and then snort or inject for a powerful and immediate opiate high. Legally, it's sold only by prescription for the treatment of chronic pain. In practice it's available just about everywhere around here, immediately, for cash. The going rate is a dollar a milligram, or $40 for a 40-milligram pill."

''There's always been a certain degree of prescription drug abuse in this area,'' says Art Van Zee, a physician in Lee County, Va., ''but there's never been anything like this. This is something that is very different and very new, and we don't understand all the reasons why. This is not just people who have long-term substance-abuse problems. In our region this is young teenagers, 13- and 14-year-olds, experimenting with recreational drug use and rapidly becoming addicted. Tens of thousands of opioid addicts are being createdout there.''

 "When I returned to the Gateway rehabilitation Center outside Pittsburgh earlier this month, I got a clearer sense of the way in which OxyContin is taking hold in urban and suburban America. I also learned about an unexpected secondary effect of OxyContin abuse: in cities like Pittsburgh, the crackdown on OxyContin is resulting in a sharp rise in heroin abuse."

 Dad on Fire had a link to this video, Oxycontin Express.  Its hard to watch if you know someone addicted to it because it will make you SO VERY ANGRY about:

- how easy it is to get
- how addicting it is
- the "doctors" who have pain clinics just to sell this stuff to whoever wants it
- how little is being done to stop it
- the amount of people, mostly young, that are dying from it (11 per day in Florida)

One thing that really got to me was when someone on the film said (paraphrased)  "If Manatees were washing up on our shores and mysteriously dying we would have no problem getting plenty of funding and support to find out why and save them.  But when it comes to PEOPLE DYING from this DRUG we have very little help, its basically ignored".

Another warming because I know some of you are sensitive to this:  It does show a guy smoking oxy, so please be aware of that.  I haven't watched the entire thing yet but saw enough to know its excellent, but heartbreaking and anger making, info.




Peace, Hope and Love,
Barbara