It's come to this: " Police: Elderly sell pain pills for cash"

I'm speechless. I have no idea what to say. I'll just leave it at that and hope some of you will help me find some words to express what I feel when I read this story.
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Police: Elderly sell pain pills for cash

PRESTONSBURG, Kentucky (AP) -- Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel around her.



The woman -- who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December -- is among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling their painkillers and other medications to addicts.

"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.

Since April 2004, Operation UNITE, a Kentucky anti-drug task force created largely in response to rampant abuse of the powerful and sometimes lethal painkiller OxyContin, has charged more than 40 people 60 or older with selling primarily prescription drugs in the mountains.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/12/elderly.dealers.ap/index.html
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Someone please tell me this is some sort of sick joke. :grr:

:kick:

America! America! May God shed his grace on thee and may you heed that grace!
Why do the elderly have to sell their pills to eat or get warm!?! :mad:

People on disability do it all the time. If you have insurance, getting that prescription and all but free pills is a highly profitable move and is incentive enough to abuse the system. The pill companies make plenty of money from the taxpayer and remember that the addictive opiates are the base of much of the pain relief in this country.

I know a guy that is a true junkie with 28 felony convictions. He became addicted to cigarettes at age 2. He is an alcoholic and addicted to pain pills and cocaine. He trades in pain pills to support his habit. One of the strangest things I ever heard him say was that he thought that Oxycotin should be illegal and I have seen him one time when he was complaining about itching from using heroin. Oxycotin is just man-made heroin using a patented time-releasing feature.

Someday I will ask him the street prices of the top ten pain pills and report it to DU. Pain pills are particularly addictive and that is why doctors are careful in their rotation when a patient is recovering from an injury.

The point: Grandmas are being stalked by the government for selling one of the only assets available to them.

That's ridiculous.

Don't you think it is illegal or do you think that drug warriors went soft on crime?

Yes, it's illegal.

That doesn't mean I think it's right.

I'll ask you: Do you think it's right to arrest elderly people for selling their medications? Is this what you want from your government?

I don't.

Some on disablity do the same. Lots of them have better drugs than most elderly.

That's the issue here.

And OxyContin is a huge problem, especially in Kentucky. The drug warrior solution is to do whatever it takes to hunt down the suppliers and when OxyContin is a huge problem, the drug warriors are going to produce arrest.

I just do not see why you find this surprising.

I have a friend dying of cancer. He sold some meds, got caught, was arrested & jailed. He made bail because he is a first time offender. His trial hasn't come up on the docket yet. I doubt if he lives long enough to be convicted.

Reading the article, the Rev. from some church says that they are "rationalizing" what they are doing and that they are the problem. And that coming from a minister of a church. So much for non judgement and compassion. But nevermind those silly, stupid concepts.

The fact that we can't take care of our seniors but can pump obscene billions into a black military hole with nothing to show for it but empty, repetitive rhetoric is just beyond anything I can or should say out loud. I'm so disgusted...

:banghead: :grr:

This is just downright shameful. It's not only that we can't take care of them...we're arresting them, photographing them and throwing them in jail.

:grr: You slimy repukes! While you despicable Congress critters enjoy your Federally funded health care benefits, this is what you reduce seniors too in this Country! Shame on you! :mad:

people sell food commodities..they re-sell food stamps and yes..even drugs they get via prescription..

$500 a month is not enough to live on ANYWHERE in the US, and people do need cash from time to time, so they will sell whatever they can to get it.

Young women sell their bodies..old women sell their meds.. Cruel societies push the least of us into very tight corners, and then get huffy when people resort to desperate measures.

There is a HUGE demand for OxyContin on the black market. Some of the pills go for around $80 apiece. And a lot of people know about it. It is pretty much Heroin in a pill form.

:kick: