Seniors Charged With Selling Prescriptions
n Appalachia, Senior Citizens Charged With Selling Their Prescription Drugs
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.....
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.....
posted by cyouincourt007 at 2:54 PM
6 Comments:
It is a shame & disgrace that our seniors are forced to sale their meds, in order to pay their utility bills each month & to keep from going hungry,yet our president is feeding & housing millions of overseas people & rebulding whole countries back real nice to make them comfortable.If Mr.Bush would take care of his own people here at home our elderly people would not have to resort to these means of an income.Lets face the truth......
If our seniors had better health coverage & a bit higher draw every month they would not have to turn to such acts to provide an income for themselves that they can survive on.But yet our drug problem in Floyd County starts with the doctors that are writing these prescriptions setting back & getting richer by the day while our streets are being flooded with pills by people that go to these doctors for this reason only.If they cant get them so easy then they cant sale them so easy .LETS BLAME THE DOCS ON THIS ONE.....
Both valid points....I can only imagine how bad it will be for us when were seniors and beyond....
We definitely have a drug problem in Eastern Ky.,but I personally can tell a difference in the death rate of our young people on the drug OD list.So I think there may be a few that are just a bit afraid of UNITE.(More power to UNITE)It's not only elderly people using drug sales as an income but younger people also so they can provide for their young children & even help to raise their grand children.(But this is because their parents have got on drugs & left their small children for their grandparents to raise them.)Drugs are absolutely destroying this wonderful county,state,&country.People its not just here in Floyd County,Ky.,it is everywhere.Speaking of the blame on the doctors:There are young people walking around without teeth,because they go to the dentist & get their teeth pulled so they can get the pain pills that are given afterwards.If you dont believe me then inquire a little for your self.There are so many other examples I could name,but I have already written too much so I will just end it here.
Speaking of the UNITE program in action,it is a good thing,but why not take just half of the money put up for it & put in more drug re-hab places.This would solve 2 problems;it would get the drug users off the streets,& prevent the overcrowding of all of the jails also.Most all of the crimes that lead to jail time are drug related.Also lets work on some Industrial parks to send these re-hab releases to when they have completed the re-hab instead of sending them back out on the drug infested streets without a job & no hope of finding one.Floyd County is kind of a depressing little place to someone battling with drug or alcohol abuse problems,so they turn to things to help them with their depression,cause they know they dont have a job & cant get one unless they leave their families & friends & go far away to get work,& in their minds this an even more depressing thing for them.So Floyd County lets do something about these things & we will solve a lot of problems that we have faced in the past,& will keep facing them until something is done about it.Lets kill a lot of problems with one solution.
Thanks for the input...smart ideas put forth as well.......God help us all......research conducted for some papers I had to do in a Drugs and Society class pointed towards faith based drug treatment centers having a 25% recidivism rate while standard issue rehab had aprozimately 75% recidivism.....furthermore due to lack of funding and availability of either such facilities....long waiting lists exist,treatment is too expensive for the average american and as the money dwindles so do the facilities, counselors and individuals involved in such efforts...throwing them all in jail doesn't solve the problem at all : ) thanks again for joining in .....we all face similar problems accross this great nation...big cities and small towns too
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