Gray Lambasts AynRandy on Drug War Funding

Good on Jim Gray, but they're both still missing the point.

No amount of money for programs to deny painkilling drugs to people in chronic pain is ever going to solve the problem of people in chronic pain overdosing on heroin because of programs that deny painkilling drugs to people in chronic pain.

This beyond-stupid insanity is not just counter-productive; it is literally murdering people who just want some relief from constant pain. And the murderer is not a heroin dealer; it's the legislators who think threatening doctors into denying painkilling drugs is going to solve anything.

Meanwhile, the DEA is once again snatching a useful drug away and falsely labeling it dangerous. This is the same agency, remember, that labels marijuana as dangerous as heroin but thinks the alcohol and nicotine that kill more than a million Americans every year - pot kills exactly zero - are fucking health food.

Daniel Desrochers at the Herald:

Two dozen people in Louisville overdosed on drugs Tuesday, prompting an emergency room doctor to declare a public health emergency.

Two weeks before, there were 26 overdoses in Huntington, W.Va. Then 50 overdoses in Cincinnati, followed by 12 in Mount Sterling.

On Wednesday, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul this fall, held a news conference in Louisville to chastise Paul and Congress for failing to fund the recently passed Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. It calls for improving prescription drug monitoring programs, expanding treatment for addicted prison inmates and increasing the availability of a drug that counters the effects of heroin and opioid overdoses.

“Legislation without funding is a failure,” Gray said. “You have to fund it and that hasn’t been done.”

Earlier in the year, President Barack Obama asked Congress to provide $960 million with the act, but Congress didn’t include funding.

Gray criticized Paul, R-Bowling Green, for not voting for an amendment that would allocate about $600 million with the bill.