Controlled Substances

Glenn, I almost always agree with you, but you are a bit out of your field here.

What field is it that one has to be in for one's opinion about what the govt should know about us to be valid?

Glenn, as to your question about the difference between the advisory role lawyers play and the seeming parental role docs play, it seems to me the difference is in that docs, even moreso than attorneys, think the public are too dumb (excuse me, not educated enough) to know what's best for them.

I don't know what the law says about the difference, or whether it falls under ethics rules for docs, but in my experience, whenever some issue was important enough for me to research various treatments, when I finally talked to the doc s/he didn't generally know any more than I did. In fact I've had to download things to show them to bring them up to speed.

When the issue is pharmaceutical it's especially easy to get as much info as anybody has by researching it. If it's some rarefied area where a specialist would know more than the patient, then no rational person is going to argue with their doc anyway. But when it's simply a decision about whether someone is willing to accept the known (by patients as well as MD's) drawbacks that come with certain controlled substances, it shouldn't be up to a doc to tell you whether it's worth it.

One thing I can say is that your local pharmacist(they go to school for six years) may have more extensive knowledge about drugs and of drug interactions than your average physician, unless you have several professors of pharmacology in the family. Physicians often have deals with pharmaceutical reps. The word is kickback. What's the difference, Shooter? Limbaugh, and the pill pushers who filled his scrips, both knew his back problems had subsided. These pills were not to treat back pain. The rich white patient get's his top quality heroin from a dealer with an address in a nice part of town and insurance companiies (all of us) pay for it. When they both get busted, they both get a slaps on the wrist. The poor folks who buy the crap in the street at 200 times the price, get poisoned, beat, overdosed, bled dry, shot, stabbed, robbed, and if they are lucky, drug diversion. If not, they lose their job, if they still have one, and serious jail time.

Any questions?

Introvertgirl... My thoughts were, and are, so incoherent right now. Reading Glenn's great dissections has me grinding my teeth, but the chipping away of abortion rights today added to the surveilance information has my head exploding.

That's nonsense. If you want to see incoherent, wait for one of the amateur trolls top show up. But if you are a bit less razor sharp than usual, you have a legitimate and justifiable reason for it. In fact, I wanted to link to your posts about your experiences with "the new little guest" in the debate over Gonzales v. Carhart at Jack Balkin's. I found them to be quite a good description of what it must be like to be "stoppered". And you communicated the confusing and contradictory hormonally induced emotions perfectly. I didn't because you are an introvert and I didn't want to impose on your space.

;-)

The National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws is the technical assistance provider for states developing Prescription Drug Monitoring programs (http://www.natlalliance.org/prescription_drug.asp). State status reports and program summaries can be found here, including a list of the 33 states that have enacted enabling legislation and the 24 states with operational programs (http://www.natlalliance.org/pdfs/Status%20of%20States%20-%20Web%20Version10.pdf).

It looks like a couple of federal acts are involved:

The [National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005] creates a grant program for states to create prescription drug monitoring databases and enhance existing ones, similar to the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring grant program [The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program was created by the FY 2002 U.S. Department of Justice Appropriations Act (Public Law 107-77)]. NASPER authorizes $60 million for the program through fiscal 2010. While the Harold Rogers Grant Program is placed within the Department of Justice, the NASPER program is placed within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); however, DEA is working closely with HHS to coordinate this new program. http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/program/rx_monitor/faqs.htm

"Amazingly, it is the political movement that spent all of the 1990s stridently warning of the dangers of federal government power -- The Black Helicopters And Janet Reno Are Coming -- which has brought us this Surveillance State and continues to cheer on its infinite expansion."

Thanks for stating this. This phonemenon is what contnually astounds me. Wasn't Newt Gingrich having fits about "jack-booted thugs" from the feds? How did these guys do a 180 on this and NO ONE in the MSM (let alone FOX Noise) ever calls them on it? Drives me crazy.

i think what we are seeing is poindexters' old darpa data mining program ..which was submarined after strong public objection ... simply living on in the soft underbelly of the bureaucratic beast ... cloaked in dark spaces

we said "no" .. they're doin' it anyway .. so what's new ??

While I can understand the desire to demonize Bush via national databases, I think it is clouding the judgement of most here. Without a national ID card how will anyone know if employers are using illegals? Isn't that a vested interest for unions?

Shouldn't we have a database for sex offenders? That would seem to be a vested interest for feminists and secularists.

Shouldn't we have a national registry for felons? Is it preferable for criminals to resume fresh careers by moving to another state?

Before information became mobile it was rational for states to be custodians on a logistical basis but that is antique thinking. If it is acceptable for states to have databases, it is absurd not to national ones. Unless one is interested in willful ignorance.

At some point willful ignorance becomes negligence. Is that really a good idea?