Stop Targeting the Wrong People for Opioid Abuse

Visit a nursing home sometime.  Look for the old men and women sitting in their chairs with tears running down their faces. They're not lonely; they're suffering non-stop agony because Kentucky's lethal yet ridiculous KASPER law has taken away their painkillers.

Kevin Drum brings the scientific facts:

The main reason prescriptions went up is that doctors really had been undertreating pain for a long time. And it turns out that the biggest problem with high rates of opioid prescription don’t come from pain patients anyway. Addiction rates among pain patients are actually fairly low: anywhere from 0.1 percent to less than 8 percent, and very few pain patients ever move on to heroin or other drugs. Rather, the biggest part of the problem comes from people who score opioid painkillers elsewhere. And where do they get them? From leftovers sitting around their parents’ medicine chests. From friends. From the black market.

In other words, if we really want to address the opioid epidemic, our best strategy is not to focus all our attention on prescriptions among legitimate pain patients. Nor is it to refight the war on drugs yet again. Instead, we need to:

• Get better at screening people with previous (or current) addictions.
• Prescribe fewer pills after surgeries, but make it easy to get refills. The idea here is to limit the number of leftover pills lying around, but to do it without making things difficult for pain patients.
• Crack down on pill mills and on shipments plainly bound for the black market—but without making doctors live in fear of the DEA knocking on their door if they treat their pain patients properly.
• Get tougher on misleading pharmaceutical marketing.
• Fund much more research on pain management and alternative pain strategies.

This is what President Trump ought to be doing as part of his “public health emergency” over opioid deaths.

KY Lawmakers Addicted to Opioid Stupidity

Like I've been saying for years.  But here's some official confirmation.

Josh Bloom in an op-ed at the Herald:

As the death toll from opioid overdoses in Kentucky and the rest of the Midwest continues to soar, it’s truly disconcerting to see that policymakers are taking steps that are not only devoid of medical and common sense, but virtually guaranteed to make matters worse.

The recent passage of the ill-conceived House Bill 333, which imposes a three-day limit (with certain exceptions) on opioid prescribing, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasons behind the addiction epidemic.

All this new law will accomplish is to make matters worse for both pain patients and addicts. The former will suffer needlessly; the latter will die in even greater numbers.

The absence of common sense in Kentucky’s approach to this problem is mind-boggling. Lawmakers, who believe that further tightening of the already-stringent legal prescription practices of opioid painkillers will stop the wave of deaths that has hit the region so hard, have it dead wrong.

It is crystal clear in multiple states across the country that the overwhelming majority of opioid overdose deaths are not a result of pills. Death from opioid pills (in the absence of other drugs) is uncommon.

Perversely, the increase in deaths we are seeing now is a direct result of the difficulty in obtaining pills. Within the past decade, opioid pills became difficult to get and prohibitively expensive, which caused addicts to switch in droves to heroin. This is the root cause of soaring overdose deaths, not pills from pharmacies.

Second, and far worse, heroin is no longer the “safe” drug that it once was. Over the past three years, it has been increasingly mixed with, or replaced entirely by, fentanyl and its far more potent chemical cousins. It is this progression from pills to heroin to fentanyl that is responsible for the skyrocketing overdose deaths we are now seeing.

Although it is convenient and plausible to blame today’s crisis on prior over-prescription of pain medications, this is simply a false narrative. This is seen in multiple literature analyses, including a review of 30 studies in the journal Pain and a comprehensive Cochrane review, which examined 26 more.

Patients who are being treated responsibly for moderate-to-severe pain rarely become addicted. The Cochrane review found that only 0.46 percent of pain patients became addicted. The vast majority of today’s addicts became so by using opioid pills recreationally and later progressing to injectable opioids once the supply of pills dried up.

But the real victims here are pain patients.

Many of them, who have been treated for very painful chronic injuries or medical conditions for decades, are terrified of being cut off from the medicines that are essential for their survival. That’s because states are already beginning to impose arbitrary limits of maximum daily doses of the drugs.

That is both cruel and scientifically flawed, especially since it’s known there is a very wide range in how people metabolize opioids — as much as a 15-fold difference between individuals, which drastically affects blood levels of the drugs.

This ensures a “one-size-fits-all” approach is doomed to fail. Although anecdotal, stories involving suicides of pain patients who have been unable to obtain the drugs that they need just to exist are easy to find.

When states and government agencies crack down on a legally prescribed, essential medicine, they are not only addressing the wrong problem but also are making matters worse for both addicts and patients. Laws such as Kentucky’s may seem to make sense on the surface, but even a little digging reveals how flawed they really are. Everyone gets hurt.

Josh Bloom is director of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. 

Legalize pot.  It's the only way out.

Tax Reform That Will Actually Help Kentuckians

While Governor "I Got Mine, Fuck You" Bevin plots to kick your granny into a ditch, make you pay a 20 percent tax on food and give you a stick to bite on in place of pain relief, dems in Wisconsin have found a way to increase revenue painlessly.

Legalize marijuana, of course.  $40 million a year.  Not even selling poorer Kentuckians into slavery would bring in that much money. As a bonus, no more opioid crisis!  The longer Kentucky waits, the more market share the smart states are gobbling up. 

1410 WIZM Radio:

The Wisconsin state budget is 14 days overdue. 

Democratic state rep. Tod Ohnstad says it's striking that Republicans are fighting amongst themselves over where to scrape together money for schools and roads.

"One solution is staring us in the face and that is the legalization of marijuana," Ohnstad said.

Ohnstad is a supporter of the latest attempt to legalize recreational marijuana in Wisconsin. He says there's a pile of money waiting for lawmakers trying to finish the budget.

"It is estimated that between 30 to 49 million dollars a year in revenue would be generated actually, if it was legalized," Ohnstad said.

The new measure would, among other things, allow growing pot plants for personal use and calls for consumer protection to insure the quality of marijuana getting sold.

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.

HT End Opiate Abuse: Legalize Pot

But they won't because ending opioid abuse is not the point of stupid laws like KASPER. 

 

The point of KASPER is to keep Big Pharma obscenely rich, the population permanently disabled by chronic pain and doctors cowed into obedience by the terroristic threat of losing their license and livelihood.

 

From Kevin Drum:

Here's a fascinating study. A pair of researchers at the University of Georgia took a look at what happened to prescriptions for opioid painkillers in states that passed medical marijuana laws. Over at the Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham summarizes their results:

They found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013,prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication.

Needless to say, the painkiller industry would much rather have you gulp down their addictive and lucrative product. They are not taking the threat from medical marijuana lying down:

The tanking numbers for painkiller prescriptions in medical marijuana states are likely to cause some concern among pharmaceutical companies. These companies have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization.

Pharmaceutical companies have also lobbied federal agencies directly to prevent the liberalization of marijuana laws. In one case, recently uncovered by the office of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that naturally derived THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana, be moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 of the Controlled Substances Act — a less restrictive category that would acknowledge the drug's medical use and make it easier to research and prescribe. Several months after HHS submitted its recommendation, at least one drug company that manufactures a synthetic version of THC — which would presumably have to compete with any natural derivatives — wrote to the Drug Enforcement Administration to express opposition to rescheduling natural THC, citing "the abuse potential in terms of the need to grow and cultivate substantial crops of marijuana in the United States."

The study estimates that if all 50 states legalized medical marijuana, Medicare would save $500 million per year in painkiller spending. It's hard to extrapolate that to overall spending on painkiller medication, but the total savings would be on the order of $2 billion per year—maybe more.

On Opioids, Both Sides in Congress Are Wrong

Yes, Kentucky is ground zero for the prescription and illegal drug crisis.  But Longman doesn't understand why:  It's because KASPER forces doctors to deny painkilling drugs to their patients in chronic pain, who thus in desperation turn to heroin.  The heroin epidemic exploded in direct response to KASPER.

 

Trying to stop the heroin epidemic by denying prescription painkillers is like trying to fix dehydration by denying liquids.

Martin Longman at Political Animal:

Back on March 10th, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 in a 94-1 roll call. (I wrote about the effort to pass that bill here).

You would think that a bill that can get 94 votes in the Senate (with only Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska dissenting) should be able to pass in the House. But it’s not a sure thing for the precise reason you might guess.

SNIP

Still, other largely partisan differences could complicate passage of any House-altered version of the Senate’s bill.

That’s because Republicans and Democrats agree that the country’s opioid drug abuse epidemic affects most states and districts, but a House hearing just before the recess period began exposed partisan rifts over key factors driving the addiction epidemic problem.

Democrats largely link the uptick in prescription painkiller-related deaths to a lack of access to treatment and drugs designed to prevent overdoses. But House Oversight and Government Reform Republicans see the root problems as subpar efforts to stop drug traffickers, laws making marijuana illegal, and fewer drug-related prosecutions.

 Like I said, they're both wrong.  Stop threatening doctors, stop demonizing drugs and stop denying relief to people in pain. 

CDC to Doctors: Send Your Patients Directly to Heroin Dealers

Yes, that is exactly the consequence of this unbelievably stupid policy.  

We have a heroin epidemic in this country for one reason and one reason only: doctors have been violating their Hippocratic Oaths by refusing to prescribe effective painkillers to patients in chronic pain.  Those desperate patients go to the only place left to find pain relief: heroin dealers.

Kevin Drum:

With opioid painkiller addiction now at epidemic levels, the CDC has finally issued new guidelines for primary care doctors:

The guidelines recommend what many addiction experts have long called for — that doctors first try ibuprofen and aspirin to treat pain, and that opioid treatment for short-term pain last for three days, and rarely longer than seven. That is far less than current practice, in which patients are often given two weeks or a month worth of pills.

The guidelines are meant for primary care doctors, who prescribe about half of all opioids but often have little training in how to use them. They call for patients to be urine tested before getting prescriptions and for doctors to check prescription drug tracking systems to make sure patients are not secretly getting medicine somewhere else. Currently, 49 states have such systems, but only 16 require that doctors use them, according to experts at Brandeis University.

Denying pain relief to people in pain is the one and only thing that created the heroin epidemic. Stopping the torture of people in pain is the only thing that will end it. 

"Getting smarter about how we address substance use disorders"

The only place to start, Mr. President, is by eliminating programs like Kentucky's KASPER that punish doctors for prescribing needed painkillers and force people in chronic pain to turn to heroin.  End the crime of KASPER first, and the rest will be easy.



Full transcript here.

Condemning People in Pain to Ignore the Facts on Heroin, Still and Again

Did you see this? The Obama administration has a revolutionary plan to help law enforcement officials partner with health experts."  No, it doesn't.  Any plan that does not deal with the fact that bans on prescription painkillers are driving thousands of desperate people in chronic pain to heroin is a waste of time and money as well as a crime against public health.

It's spreading.  The stupidity of KASPER out of Frankfort has infected Washington.  Now everybody in the country gets to suffer in agony because the fucking War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs doesn't have enough victims.

Shame on you, President Obama. You know better.  Shame!

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

The Obama administration unveiled a new strategy to combat heroin abuse on Monday, pledging $2.5 million in additional funds to target five “high intensity drug trafficking areas.” The plan, which aims to pair law enforcement officials with health experts, is notable for its emphasis on connecting heroin users with treatment rather than focusing on putting them behind bars.

In the 15 states participating in the pilot program, a public health official will coordinate “heroin response teams” and help track the number of overdoses in their region. More first responders will be trained about how to administer naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses from heroin and prescription painkillers.

The new strategy “demonstrates a strong commitment to address the heroin and prescription opioid epidemic as both a public health and a public safety issue,” according to Michael Botticelli, the Obama administration’s director of national drug control policy.

How to Ruin Lives and Destroy the Medical Profession With One Idiotic Law

Uh, hello? Anybody remember the heroin epidemic that exploded shortly after KASPER went into effect?  Of COURSE there are fewer pain prescriptions or people doctor-shopping:  all of those people are now buying heroin.

But of course they remember the heroin epidemic and know perfectly well why it is still growing:  the very program they’re promoting here.  They’re just hoping you don’t remember it and make the connection.

But because there are very few people in Kentucky who are not:

• struggling with chronic pain because KASPER prevents them from getting necessary medication, 
• taking heroin because they can’t get needed pain medication, or
• the friend or family of someone who is

There are even fewer people in Kentucky who don’t realize that Governor Cowardly Worm and his pet researchers at UK (Shame on UK!) are motherfucking liars who are lying about fucking their mothers.

Since Kentucky’s landmark prescription drug abuse legislation took effect in 2012, the Commonwealth has seen a significant decline in the number of prescriptions for the most commonly abused medications, doctor shopping has decreased by more than 50 percent, and more Kentuckians are seeking treatment for prescription medication addiction.

These findings, among others, are part of a yearlong study conducted by researchers at the University of Kentucky Institute for Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy and compiled in a report to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS).

Gov. Steve Beshear joined Attorney General Jack Conway, lawmakers and health industry officials today to announce the report.

The study specifically researched and analyzed the impact of state law known as House Bill 1, which was passed in a special session by the 2012 General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Beshear.

“House Bill 1 was a bipartisan effort designed to help us fight the epidemic of prescription drug abuse in Kentucky, and it’s doing exactly that,” said Gov. Beshear. “Since the law was enacted, not only have we seen a decline in doctor shopping and prescriptions for heavily abused medications, pill mills have closed and the provider community at large has become more educated and committed to using best practices for prescribing these commonly abused medications.”

But what House Bill 1 really did was criminalize pain relief.  It hit the mosquito of pill mills with a bazooka, taking out the ability of thousands of doctors to prescribe legitimate pain medication at the same time.

Doctors everywhere in Kentucky are refusing to prescribe any pain medication at all for any reason to anyone.  That is how draconian the KASPER regs are.   Write one scrip, and if the KASPER police wake up with a wild hair, they can strip you of your license to practice medicine. Forever.

So now we have thousands of Kentuckians with legitimate chronic pain desperate for relief, turned away by the medical profession and able to survive only by using heroin.

All thanks to the prescription drug law that makes trying to relieve someone's pain a crime.

Money Won't Stop Heroin Overdoses. Only Decriminalizing Painkillers Will Do That

John Cheves at the Herald:

The state will provide $105,000 for three urban hospitals, including the University of Kentucky's in Lexington, to buy about 2,000 naloxone kits to send home with heroin overdose patients, Gov. Steve Beshear said Tuesday.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/01/06/3626974/state-to-fund-kits-with-life-saving.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy

People in genuine, severe, chronic pain cannot get the prescription painkillers they need for love nor money because Kentucky law threatens to prosecute any doctor who dares to write a legitimate prescription for narcotics.

People are fucking desperate, so of course they're buying heroin on the street and of course they're dying of overdoses.

But throwing people in agonizing pain into jail will not solve the problem.

Only repealing the cruel, deadly, lunatic KASPER law will save lives.

But neither KASPER nor Conway's initiative are intended to save lives.  They are intended to do exactly what they are doing, which is maintain the insane War on Drugs.

Majority of Kentuckians Support Medical Marijuana

That would be all of us now denied pain relief of because of prescription drug hysteria. Plus our friends, families and coworkers, and everyone with a fucking grain of sense or iota of compassion.

As a bonus, medical marijuana would also drastically reduce the heroin addiction that arises in response to deny narcotic pain killers to people in chronic pain.

Janet Patton at the Herald:

A slim majority of Kentucky voters is ready to legalize medical marijuana, according to a Herald-Leader/WKYT Bluegrass Poll. The survey asked 1,082 registered voters whether they favored or opposed allowing the use of medical marijuana in Kentucky; 52 percent were in favor, 37 percent were opposed and 12 percent were not sure.

Support for medical marijuana was highest in the 18-34 age range, at 60 percent, and lowest among voters 65 and older, at 35 percent. Democrats were more likely to say they favored allowing medical marijuana than Republicans, with 58 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans supporting legalization of marijuana for medical purposes.

Support was slightly higher in the more urban areas of the state than in rural Western and Eastern Kentucky.

The survey was conducted Jan. 30 to Feb. 3 by SurveyUSA and in partnership with The Courier-Journal and WHAS-TV in Louisville. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

At least 20 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws allowing some use of marijuana to treat medical conditions, and voters in Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana.

The issue remains controversial in more socially conservative states, such as Kentucky, where law enforcement officials have tried for decades to eradicate marijuana cultivation.

But a shift in the public's thinking has some lawmakers in Kentucky's General Assembly reconsidering that stance.

And the real reason cops opposed loosening the draconion laws criminalizing marijuana is because those laws allows cops to confiscate the property of anyone so much as suspected of possessing marijuana, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.

Of course it's unconstitutional. But it gets legislators off the budget hook for actually funding decent law enforcement.

This Is How You Fight the War on Drugs

Not with tanks and tasers and military tactics, but with treatment.

Laura Unger at the Courier:

Kentucky state leaders announced Monday that they will pour more than $32 million into drug treatment — a huge financial boost in a state plagued by one of the nation’s worst prescription drug abuse epidemics and a growing heroin problem.

The money comes from two settlements with pharmaceutical companies that marketed diabetes and osteoarthritis drugs that state officials said raised the risk of cardiovascular problems.



The funds will be used for a long list of drug treatment projects and programs, including a new treatment center in Ashland, 14 drug-free homes, a grant program for juvenile substance abusers in need of treatment, programs for pregnant addicts and others.


“At the end of the day, we must increase access to treatment if we’re going to stop the cycle of addiction,” said Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who called the treatment investment “historic.” “These settlement funds will expand treatment for youth and adults throughout the commonwealth.”

The next step is for the governor and general assembly to repeal the draconian prescription drug laws that have caused the heroin epidemic and left tens of thousands of Kentuckians in chronic pain without access to prescription pain relievers.

But the fastest, cheapest and most effective way to end Kentucky casualties from what LGM calls the War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs is to legalize marijuana.

Rx Crackdown in Kentucky Leads to 550% Increase in Heroin Overdoses

But people in genuine pain can no longer get relief because legitimate physicians are threatened with prison if they prescribe painkillers, so it's all good!

From the Kentucky Justice Cabinet:

For the first time in a decade, Kentucky overdose deaths declined in 2012, according to a report issued today by the Office of Drug Control Policy.  Even with the overall drop, autopsied overdose deaths attributed to the use of heroin increased 550 percent over the previous year, to 143 cases, up from 22 in 2011.

Might there possibly be a connection with the passage, in 2012, of a ludicrously draconian prescription drug law that forced people suffering chronic pain to turn to heroin when terrified physicians refused them legitimate pain killers?

Why ever would you think such a thing?  Maybe because it was predicted by many people at the time? 

Funny how the press release from the Governor's Office doesn't mention a word about heroin.

One year after landmark legislation aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse took effect, Governor Steve Beshear credited the bill with closing non-compliant pain management clinics and reducing the number of prescriptions for heavily-abused controlled substances.

Plus, for the first time in a decade, the number of deaths blamed on prescription overdoses has declined.

House Bill 1 (HB1), signed into law by Gov. Beshear last spring, included multiple elements to prevent the abuse and diversion of prescription drugs and to enhance law enforcement's tools to investigate illegal prescribing practices.

Tell that to Dylan Poindexter's mom, Governor.  Go on. You coward, you can't face her.

House Bill 1 has killed dozens of desperate Kentuckians in chronic pain using the only relief they can find  - heroin. And the Kentucky General Assembly, Governor Steve Beshear and every hypocritical motherfucker who supported this bill are accessories before the fact to cold-blooded, pre-meditated serial murder.

Kentucky Asks Supremes To Declare Students Unpersons

Kentucky would never dream of questioning a corporation before reading its rights, of course.  But the Supreme Court has already established that corporations are not just persons, but super-persons whose rights supercede those of mere humans.

Brett Barrouquere at the Herald:

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to step into the legal debate over whether students must be informed of their rights before being questioned during an on-campus investigation of school-related activities.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway filed a petition with the high court. It seeks to overturn a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling granting students the right to be Mirandized before questioning by school officials if a resource officer is present.

In throwing out a student's conviction for sharing prescription hydrocodone with a classmate at a Nelson County school, the state court concluded that the presence of a school resource officer and the prospect of criminal charges meant the student should have been informed of his rights. That step is commonly known as a Miranda warning.

"No reasonable student, even the vast majority of 17-year-olds, would have believed that he was at liberty to remain silent, or to leave, of that he was even admitting criminal responsibility under these circumstances," Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Mary Noble wrote in April. "If he had been an adult under these same circumstances, there is no question that the statements would not have been admissible under Miranda."

It is an affront to democracy that this is even a question. That there are states where 17-year-old human beings have fewer rights than soul-less, obscenely wealthy criminal corporations.

And it's being handed to the corporatist Roberts Court by a man who's probably running for Kentucky governor in two years. 

First Federal Hate Crime Charges in Nation Send Kentuckians to Prison

That the motherfuckers who kidnapped and beat a gay man were his own brothers is just Eastern Kentucky's signature twist on the crime.

Bill Estep at the Herald:

In the first case of its kind in the nation, four Eastern Kentucky relatives were sentenced in federal court Wednesday for their role in an attack on a gay Letcher County man in April 2011.

David Jason Jenkins, 39, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for kidnapping and beating Kevin Pennington. Anthony Jenkins, 22, a cousin to Jason Jenkins, was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove.

Anthony Jenkins' wife, Alexis, and his sister, Ashley, pleaded guilty to aiding in the attack. Van Tatenhove sentenced Alexis Jenkins, 20, to eight years in prison and Ashley Jenkins, 20, to eight years and four months.

The case received nationwide attention because the charges against the four were the first under a part of the federal hate-crimes law that outlaws attacks motivated by the victim's real or perceived sexual orientation.

The details are bizarre even for Eastern Kentucky.  Read the whole thing.

Kentucky Misses Point on Prescription Drugs - Again

The question is not how many people are abusing prescription pain-killers; the question is how many people in chronic pain are unable to get relief because doctors are terrified of Kentucky's draconian drug laws.

Laura Unger at the Courier:

Kentucky officials are launching a yearlong study to find out whether the state’s controversial new laws cracking down on prescription drug abuse are making a difference in curbing one of the nation’s worst pain-pill epidemics.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services is contracting with the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy’s Institute for Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy on the research, scheduled to begin July 1 and be completed by June 30, 2014. It’s being funded by a $100,000 federal grant from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance.


“We have a long-term vision of really looking at this. For instance: Are there unintended consequences?” said Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to see that (the laws) are doing what they’re designed to do.”

Given that the law was perfectly designed to terrorize doctors into refusing pain relief to suffering patients, it's working like a charm.

Anecdotal evidence already shows that drug abusers are turning away from prescription pain killers to illegal drugs like heroin.

As a commenter here pointed out, addicts are getting all the heroin they need from the usual dealers, while chronic pain victims are denied relief and treated with contempt.

Kentucky Needs 3,800 More Doctors Right Now - and Thousands More Next Year

It's one cause of both high health care costs and poor health outcomes in Kentucky that you rarely hear about: the severe shortage of doctors.

More doctors - thousands more doctors in Kentuckys - would ensure that everyone can get in to see a doctor when he or she needs to see a doctor, without having to wait weeks or drive hours.

More doctors - thousands more doctors in Kentucky - would mean competition for patients, which lowers costs.

Laura Unger at the Courier:

Kentucky needs 3,790 more doctors, including 183 additional primary care physicians, to meet current demand for care — and those numbers will grow when more Kentuckians get coverage through a Medicaid expansion and health benefit exchange under health reform.

Those are some of the findings in a workforce capacity study report by Deloitte Consulting that was the subject of a briefing Wednesday held by the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services.


The report is scheduled to be made available on the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange website next week.

The report looked at the state’s longstanding shortages of health care providers, particularly in rural areas, and made recommendations to increase the state’s health workforce.


They include two controversial proposals — supporting the idea of allowing nurse practitioners to prescribe non-scheduled drugs without having a written agreement with a doctor, and evaluating the possibility of changing statutes related to medical malpractice caps.

 It's hard to attract doctors to a state that throws them in jail for relieving a patient's pain.

Not to mention a state that values corporate tax breaks and worshipping Big Coal above education, economic growth and environmental protection.

Court: Kentucky Students Are Human Beings With Rights

Let's hope this is the first in a series of decisions that will put an end to the egregiously unconstitutional practice of slamming (primarily minority and disabled) kids into jail for the terroristic practices of talking back to teachers and throwing spitballs.

Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

Kentucky students must be given Miranda warnings — that they have right to remain silent and to have a lawyer — if they are interviewed by principals with a school officer present, a divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a 4-3 opinion that dissenting justices warned could endanger school safety, the court held that a statement from a Nelson County student who admitted giving two pills to another student must be suppressed because he was not read his rights first.

SNIP

The case began in 2009 when a Nelson County High School teacher found an empty prescription pain pill bottle on a restroom floor with a student's name on it.

School officer Stephen Campbell, an armed deputy sheriff, and Nelson County assistant principal Mike Glass escorted the student to Glass’ office, where he was questioned with the door closed.

The student, identified only as N.C., admitted that he did “something stupid” — brought three pills from home because he'd had his wisdom teeth pulled and was in pain, and that he'd given two to another student.

Three pain pills? An armed deputy sheriff in the school? The fascistic treatment of a student who poses no threat at all is only the beginning of the problems at this school and all Kentucky schools.

• That alleviating pain is a crime in Kentucky is turning thousands of law-abiding but suffering citizens into felons whose lives are destroyed because they sought pain relief..
• I hope the parents of the first child killed by an armed deputy sheriff in the school - and I'm amazed NC wasn't the first - sues the school system, the principal, the school board members and the guntard state legislators for every dime they have and ever will have.
• Speaking of lawsuits, NC's got a bunch of great ones. Sue every single one of the motherfuckers involved, kid, and don't forget to have your phony conviction overturned and your record scrubbed clean.

Guntard Logic Also Defends Drug Dealing

Now I understand why Kentucky lawmakers were stepping on each others' heads to accomplish two things at once:

 - remove even the tiniest restrictions on gun purchase, carry and use

 - make it next to impossible for anyone to obtain pain-relieving drugs with a legal prescription.

For the repugs, freakazoids and guntards, it's always about abdicating personal responsibility.

 

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

This is a weird story, but it totally makes sense that a doctor handing out illegal prescriptions would use this argument:

SNIP

I mean, if gun makers and gun dealers have no responsibility for what people do with a gun, why should doctors have responsibility for what their customers do with drugs? Maybe the patients are making art out of the pills. Why not apply NRA logic about responsibility to the rest of society? Why punish bartenders if they serve obviously inebriated customers who then get behind the wheel? Why go after cigarette companies for marketing to children? It’s strictly the responsibility of the user!

To be clear, I certainly don’t agree with this doctor. He deserves punishment. But it’s also hardly surprising that other distributors of dangerous materials would abdicate responsibility based upon NRA arguments about gun use.